


A Tame Vampire

by Jellyfishhh



Category: Skip Beat!
Genre: Except it's theologically correct vampires, F/M, I can't make it any more obvious, It's vampires guys, Time to talk about the soul amirite, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellyfishhh/pseuds/Jellyfishhh
Summary: Vampirism isn't as sexy as it seems. No, for the most part, it's rather tame, and as Kyoko discovers, it leads to a whole bucket of questions about the soul, god, and where her relationship with Ren is going.





	1. Chapter 1

**A Tame Vampire**

  
It was unbearably hot. The summer sun beat down on Kyoko as she cut and bundled wheat in the open field, and a heavy bead of sweat rolled lazily down from her brow, dripping onto the linen collar of her farmer’s dress. She brought a sticky hand to her face to wipe the liquid gathering on her upper lip away, and then dropped her scythe and looked up, on cue with the other extras.

She turned as part of a crowd who watched Ren’s character wave goodbye to the film’s protagonist and sit down. Observing the actions of her co-actors, she tried not to look at him too intently. She had taken this role in order to help her senpai out, she chanted to herself internally, not to hinder his work by messing up her insubstantial part as an extra, and certainly, absolutely, not because she might be harbouring feelings of affection for him.

She kept her face rigidly in character as her brain viciously beat back all thought of love. She didn’t have the time for this. Ren Tsuruga definitely wouldn’t have the time for this.

Still, her eyes wandered to his thin lips, which curved into a placid smile and parted as he brought a dark cherry to them. He put the fruit between his dazzlingly white teeth and used two slender fingers to pull away the green stalk with a roguish snap, then bit down sharply. Deep red juice spilled out from his lips and gently down his chin. Kyoko was mesmerised.

“CUT!”

She snapped her attention back to the task at hand as the extras began to chatter, and Ren sheepishly stood up. He let the cherry stone roll from his lips onto the dry country ground, and began to properly chew the remaining flesh of the fruit.

He must have noticed her eyes lingering on him, as he turned to look for her, his eyebrows raised in genuine and innocent inquisitiveness. He didn’t find her, of course, as she had already whipped around in intense embarrassment at her own shameful thoughts and gotten lost in the crowd of false farmhands milling around.

He sighed, ruffled the black locks of hair that the makeup team had spent half an hour teasing into the perfect state of casual dishevelment, and walked off towards the support tents, mumbling something about feeling tired.

Kyoko couldn’t deny that she was disappointed to see him go, but forced herself to focus on collecting the pieces of farm equipment that had been left lying around the set along with the other actors. Despite the heat, it wasn’t all bad. She got to wear a costume, and listen to the other girls’ gossip.

“Yeah, he’s looking really pale”  
“Are you sure it’s not just the anti-shine stuff they put on his face?”  
“Dead sure. The MUA says she saw him stumbling, like looking super faint and everything.”

Kyoko shuffled just a little closer to the group of gaggling teens and cocked her ear to hear a little better.

_**Shing.** _

Before anyone really had the time to understand what had happened, Kyoko gasped in pain as a spinning silver arc neatly flew past her neck, slicing a long thin gash on her shoulder.

The gossiping girls clammed up and there was the mass crunching of tall dry wheat as actors rushed over to see what had happened. Kyoko tentatively placed a hand on the cut that was now oozing blood and winced a little in pain.

Loud and frenzied rustling was followed by the emergence of two very out of breath camera technicians into the clearing.

“Has anyone been hurt?” The taller one asked “The firing bolt from one of the high-speed zoom cameras’ just blown off. Thing’s definitely tee-totalled at this point. Must be the heat.”

He scanned the group of people at eye-height and was only forced to notice Kyoko’s presence crouching on the ground when his co-worker tapped him gently on the back. With a faint air of embarrassment, he apologised for her injuries and told her to go the medical tent.

She stumbled to her feet and nervously made her way, clamping a hand on her shoulder as she rushed past the various tents.

It was dark inside the medical tent, and cool. Kyoko felt herself calm a little as she stepped into the quiet shadows of the empty fabric space, the moisture pooling in her brow now trickling gently into her tousled hair and out of her senses. She gently lifted her palm from the wound and was mildly horrified to find that it throbbed and twinged as the salt from her sweaty palms mixed with the broken skin.

Keeping her bloody palm raised so as not to stain her costume, she used her remaining hand to open a few more buttons of her shirt and pull one sleeve down to fully expose the bleeding shoulder. She was aware that this exposed her white cotton bra strap, and kept looking to the small gap of light from the other side of the tent door to make sure that no one was walking by.

She had just reached up to the bottle of antiseptic on top of one of the makeshift shelves when a shuffling noise behind her caught her attention. She turned cautiously and saw the vague and hesitant form of Ren Tsuruga in the darkness. He was swaying slightly.

She wanted to call his name but before she had opened her mouth he had closed the gap between them and solidly rested his head on her shoulder. The shoulder with the gash. She twitched as it throbbed anew.

“Um, Tsuruga-san...” she began, heart racing out of her control “is something wrong?”

That was putting it lightly. If he was relying on a kouhai as lowly as her, he must have been full-on delirious.

He mumbled slightly and sank further onto her shoulder. The torn skin felt electrified as his warm lips brushed the rough edges.

“Tired.”  
“I thi-”

She was cut off by her own sharp inhalation of breath. Something warm and wet was trailing her shoulder. She stood in stunned silence as his tongue slowly traced her wound and licked the trails of blood that had made their way past her collarbone. Ignoring the tingly warmth that was fluttering in her stomach, she fought to rationalise the situation. Something was definitely not right.

He sucked gently on the cut, and it was at this point that Kyoko completely froze.

With a sound like the crunch of a fresh apple, his teeth cleanly tore down into her flesh and Kyoko felt her skin burn against his touch. Her head whirled with confusion, fear, and the white hot crackling of a hundred different sensations rippling across her skin. The electric impulse of pure reflex crackled through her nerves and her body reacted immediately, bucking backwards and throwing Ren off of her.

She spun to see Ren barely propping himself up on the dusty floor with an uncertain elbow. Ruby red blood dripped inelegantly from his cuspids, which reflected an unsettling pink in the dim light. He wiped some gore from his lower lip unthinkingly with the back of one of his vast hands and licked it, seemingly unaware that Kyoko was in the room at all. He frowned slightly as he took in the taste.

“Salty...”

Kyoko’s shoulder was still flowing copiously. Her breath was quickening. She was beginning to panic.

He looked up languorously and saw her for what seemed, inexplicably, to be the first time. Confusion and concerned swam in his clear eyes. They looked red with the reflection of the blood.

“You should probably get that disinfected.”

He collapsed unceremoniously onto the ground.

***

Ren woke up on an inflatable mattress in the half-darkness with Yashiro leaning menacingly over him. There was the faint taste of dry iron on his teeth and his head felt light.

“Honestly!” said Yashiro, as soon as he’d noticed Ren stirring “I leave you to your own devices for two hours and you manage to escape the crew and pass out. It’s a good job Kyoko-chan found you, or else you could have been in serious trouble.”

Ren sat up and Yashiro handed him a bottle of water and a few small tablets. Ren looked at them suspiciously and then swallowed, looking his manager in the eye as he did so.

“Was it really that hard to remember to take your iron supplements in the morning? Or at least tell the crew that you were anaemic?”

Ren sighed and put down the bottle.

“Listen to me, Yukihito, I don’t know what to tell you. I did take them this morning,” he took a small plastic case out of his pocket and shook it a bit, the pills rattling around, as evidence “and it wasn’t even that bad until Kyo...”

He petered out. Until what? He could vaguely remember Kyoko searching through the medical cabinet and the feeling of salty flesh in his teeth. What had happened? He sat in silence, putting the pieces together as Yashiro scrutinised him. Then it hit him. The realisation came down like a tonne of lead. He was in trouble. Big, big trouble.

“Until?” prompted Yashiro again.

Ren only groaned. How was he meant to explain this? Yashiro would probably freak out if he plainly said that he’d gone beserk and bitten his co-worker, and it would be even worse if he found out that it was Kyoko.

“Ren, I’m beginning to be deeply concerned. Did someone threaten you?”  
“No! No, it’s- it’s slightly more co-”

They were interrupted by the director opening the tent flap. Warm light spilled into the space, the faint red of a midsummer evening washing everything in shades of purple.

“Are you back in action then? We spent the last 3 hours using the extras for the harvest progression shots, but we need you for your sunset confrontation scene now.”

Ren nodded and pushed himself onto his feet. He strolled past the production tents as Yashiro filled him in on the parts of his schedule that had been rearranged, and watched the sun ebb closer to the horizon of the low summer sky. He noticed that there were a few drops of red on his shirt collar. The costume department were going to have a real go at him after this; blood stained like hell.

They finally arrived at the filming venue on the hill. The protagonist asked him if he was feeling alright, to which he replied in the affirmative, and they began to set up the cameras. He scanned the crowd of extras and noticed Kyoko sitting out on the side, her shoulder now tightly wrapped in excessively thick bandages. He began to make his way over, and their eyes briefly met as she swivelled on her seat to see who was approaching.  
Ren wished they hadn’t. As soon as she saw him, she hastily ended the conversation that she had been engaged in and hurried down the other side of the hill. She was definitely avoiding him.

This was really bad.

“Tsuruga-san!” called a sound assistant from behind him “We’re shooting in two, could you please get in position?”

He sighed and took his place.

***

  
He couldn’t find her after filming had ended. Apparently she’d gone home early along with some of the child actors.

“Looking for Kyoko-chan?” needled Yashiro with a sly smile.

Ren grimaced.

“I am, actually.”

Yashiro was rather caught off guard by this straightforward reply. Ren wouldn’t let him take it the wrong way, however.

“I need to thank her for helping me this afternoon.”

Yashiro raised his eyebrows in sarcastic disbelief and sighed disapprovingly. He decided that Ren probably wasn’t in the mood for further teasing, and allowed him to go to get his makeup removed and costume collected on his own.

He did however win a minor victory when he was driving back to Tokyo. A small pinging noise from Ren’s pocket in the back seat awoke his passenger from a light slumber.

“Have a nice nap?” he asked, flicking an indicator and turning onto the motorway “You should really mute your notifications.”  
“I thought I had” grumbled Ren, fishing his pockets until he extracted the device.

Sneaking a quick glance in the rear-view mirror, he noticed Ren frown in concentration as he read the text he’d just received.

“Who is it?”

Ren didn’t reply. He was pretty sure he knew who it was anyway.

“Don’t tell me… You have your notifications set specially for Kyoko-chan?”

Ren scowled at him and he knew he’d hit bullseye. Hah.

Whilst his driver lost himself in fantasies of his and Kyoko’s so far non-existent romance, Ren re-read the text. He was debating whether to be concerned or relieved.

‘Dear Tsuruga-San,’ it began, faultlessly formal as ever ‘I would like to clear up the incident that happened this afternoon. If you can possibly spare some time for a lowly kouhai such as myself, I would greatly appreciate meeting face to face.’

He slowly typed back his reply, second-guessing every word and deliberating over whether the punctuation made him seem too formal. Eventually he decided to press send, because he saw no point in further fretting over his word choices:

‘Mogami-san, I apologise if my actions have made you feel uncomfortable. I am happy to meet you tonight to discuss any misunderstandings. Would you like to come to my apartment after dinner?’

He spent a few minutes anxiously watching the countryside pass by and repeatedly checking his phone. Yashiro realised the tension of the moment and refrained from making the snide comments that came to mind.

Finally, the phone pinged once more and the screen lit up. Ren released a breath of relief.

‘Thank you, I would like that very much. I will see you at 10’

“Yukihito” he called to the driver in the front seat “We’ll be home by about ten, right?”

 

***

At ten p.m. on the dot, Ren’s apartment doorbell buzzed and he walked anxiously over to open the front door. He invited the girl standing in the doorway to come in, and she sat at his coffee table on the opposite side from him.

There was a bump from the bandages deforming her turtleneck jumper’s left shoulder, and she was tugging on one sleeve, evidently trying not to look him in the eyes. He could tell that she was nervous, maybe even scared, as she leaned as far back from him as she could.

He coughed lightly into his hands and finally brought her unwilling attention to him.

“Mogami-san, I’m afraid my memory is a little hazy. Would you mind filling me in on exactly what happened?”

Her back stiffened and she stumbled as she started to get her words out. He found it hopelessly endearing, but didn’t say it.

“Well, that is, um, you see… I was in the medical tent to, you know, clean up the wound on my shoulder, and, um, well… you sort of, uh, licked the wound? And, uh, you actually bit me, like, pretty hard. And then I sort of pushed you off and you just… passed out…” she trailed off.

She hoped her beloved senpai hadn’t noticed, but she was actually rather terrified of the situation that she was in. She had even taken the precaution of warning Kanae who she was going to meet in case things went badly, because even though she really wanted to trust the man in front of her, he had well-nigh assaulted her that afternoon and she was undeniably on edge. Her image of him had irreparably changed, but it was difficult for her to quite describe how.

“Mogami-san” Ren looked deathly pale as he fixed her with a serious stare from the other end of the long table “I really do hope that I haven’t frightened you too much. The only way that I can really explain my actions is by slightly mitigating the blame, which I hope you won’t take offence at.”

She nodded but remained leaning back. Sho had tried to divert the blame as well.

“I think the most appropriate way to describe what propelled me to act in such a way is to say that I am what you would call a vampire.”

There was silence. Kyoko didn’t break eye contact.

“Oh.”

He was surprised by the reaction. He was expecting more of a rebuttal, and said so.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Tsuruga-san, but that would actually explain a lot.”  
“Um,” he was rather distressed by the implication that his day-to-day behavior was not as normal as he tried to make it seem “How so, exactly?”  
“Well, you’re generally rather secretive, and your diet is undeniably appalling.”  
“I… I suppose that’s true, but I never thought that I was that inconspicuous.”  
“Oh, no! Not at all!” scrambled Kyoko, waving her arms in a manner that was both apologetic and defensive “You look perfectly fine, I mean, human.”

Ren frowned slightly. He’d never really confronted his status as human or otherwise in a truly philosophical way, and the notion that he was anything other than human was foreign to him.

“I do like to believe that I’m still human, actually”

Kyoko leaned in. He was glad to see that her curiosity was getting the better of her, and that she seemed more comfortable in his presence.

“But you- I mean I assume you drink blood and can’t eat garlic or normal food or stay in the sun or look in mirrors. Isn’t that weird?”

Her large honey-orange eyes widened and glistened with concern. It put him at ease to know that she was worried about him.

“I can eat garlic and normal food perfectly fine, thank you, and mirrors don’t pose me a problem. Even the whole drinking blood thing is more symbolic than anything else.”  
“Um, how?”  
“I never physically changed once I became a vampire. I’m not undead, I still need to eat and I could still die if you stabbed me.”  
“You don’t have fangs, either.”  
“No…” He studied the way that she now shifted uncomfortably in her seat “Is there a particular reason you add that?”  
“Well, the bite mark on my shoulder is, um, very noticeable. It’s not just two neat pinpricks, it’s fully just a human bitemark.”

She pointed to the bandaged shoulder in order to demonstrate her point and winced as the motion pulled on the edges of the forming scabs. Ren flinched in alarm. How had it gotten to this stage? This had never happened before, let alone to someone who he genuinely cared about.

He started to apologise once more but she cut him off.

“Well, I wanted to ask you about that, actually. I know you said you weren’t physically different from a normal human, but are you sure you don’t have that thing like mosquitoes?”

He let his face slip into unadulterated confusion. What was she going on about? She saw that she hadn’t really made herself clear and elaborated:

“You know how mosquitoes sort of inject the person they’re biting with anesthetic? Sort of like that, because when you bit me, it wasn’t even that painful, it was more…”

She caught herself and flailed her hands, mortified by where she was about to take that sentence.

“Okay, evidently not, I’ll stop there.”

His curiosity was piqued now. The feeling that he had the power to ignite such a powerful blush in her was wholly welcome.

“No, no, you can keep asking questions if you’d like.”

Was he pushing his luck? Probably. But her flustered look was cute enough that he didn’t want to stop.

“Um, I think I’ll stop there actually.”

He smiled and stood up.

“Shall I make some tea?”

He was only a step away from the kettle when he was stopped by a gentle tug on his jumper. As soon as he turned around, she relinquished her grip in embarrassment, but still remained standing close by his side, looking at the ground. She remembered how small she was next to him.

“Is anything the matter?”

Deep lines of worry marked her brow. She’d been meaning to ask this for a while now.

“I’m not going to… also become one, am I?”

The kettle whistled. The high pitched note screamed into the air and the stove clicked off. His face was obscured by the steam that clouded in the air as he poured two cups of tea.

“No, there’s no risk of that.”

He sounded so sure. An icicle neatly lodged itself in her ribcage. How many people had he done this with? It wasn’t only their secret, then; she was just one of many, nothing special. She stopped herself before the ice could spread further. Her senpai surely didn’t have time to be dealing with this.

“You’re perfectly sure?”

He smiled as her as he handed her a mug. Perhaps he could see her concern.

“I can explain the logic behind it if it’d put you more at ease.”

She yanked the teacup away from her lips. She’d forgotten to let the tea cool down, and had distractedly burnt her tongue.

“There are logical principles to these things?”  
“Well, you’ve got to go back to basics.”

She began to blow on her tea and leaned back against the kitchen counter, waiting for him to go on.

“You’re familiar with the first vampire story, aren’t you?”

She gave a non-commital nod.

“Dracula. Or variants thereof. Anyway, he became a vampire in exchange for eternal youth. He wasn’t undead, he was simply never killed. His evilness probably had little to do with his status as quasi-immortal.”  
“That’s why the main character was able to kill him?”  
“Correct.”  
“So what was the exchange about?”  
“Well, you and I both know vampires as beings who rely on blood, right? Through making a deal with the devil for eternal youth, he bargained away his soul, but the devil wasn’t going to be able to collect that soul for a long time, never maybe, so a blood oath also came into it. The blood he consumed wasn’t for base survival, but instead to maintain his pact with the devil and prevent stuff from going wrong.”

Kyoko sipped some of her tea. It was finally the right temperature.

“What does that have to do with, um, our situation?” she asked, words echoing inside the mug, and then added “could I have some milk please?”

He stopped leaning on the counter opposite her and strode to the fridge, first putting his mug down.

“Well, assuming that every individual owns their own soul, it would be impossible,” he said, opening the fridge door and pulling out a glass bottle of milk “for a vampire, a vessel of the devil, to go around monopolising bodies in which unwilling souls resided. Each person has their own, and can decide what they want to do with it.”

He turned and closed the door behind him, walking back to her.

“That means you should be perfectly alright.”

She eyed him warily as he handed her the milk.

“So you made a pact with the devil?”

It caught him off guard. The glassware tumbled gracelessly out of his hands to the floor, where it shattered, spilling glass shards and lakes of white over the grey tiles.

Kyoko quickly put down her mug and began to pick up the larger pieces, crouching on her tiptoes to avoid stepping in the liquid.

Ren reacted late, only reaching down to help her a few seconds later.

“I’m sorry, I don’t -” he stumbled, rolling up his shirt sleeves “I don’t know what came over me”

He was cut off by a breathy exclamation of shock from Kyoko. She had cut one of her fingers on a smaller shard.

He realised now how close they were. They were crouched on the same level, faces inches apart. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheeks and smell the tea lingering in it. Red blood began to drip from her hand, blossoming pink clouds in the white milk below.

His head began to throb. He felt his eyes inescapably drawn to the small stream of blood, saw red begin to saturate his senses. The smell of salt and iron became all-consuming as he fought to banish the sound of her veins pumping from his head. He was shaking, barely able to keep himself still, and yet he didn’t know what he wanted.

“Mogami-san” he said with a laboured breath “I think you’d better go now”

 

***

  
It was late that night when the devil came to him.

He was sat at the counter with a glass of red wine and a head full of questions when he noticed it.

A bleat sounded from the darker half of the room. The white silhouette of a goat sat knowingly on his sofa, unblinking. In the darkness its watery yellow eyes seemed to glow like lanterns and its unsettling horizontal pupils fell like black windows into the abyss, fixing on him and narrowing. It didn't need to introduce itself.

"What do you want?" Ren asked, looking back at his glass of wine.

The goat opened its small mouth and revealed worn and yellowed teeth as it released a long, low bleat. It serenely conveyed its wordless message in the way that only the primordial may.

_'I HAVE COME TO WARN YOU'_

"Warn me? Of what?" He sipped his wine "I've been nicely complying"

_'NO'_

He didn't reply, only drained his glass and wondered how his own thoughts were appearing in block capitals.

_'YOU GIVE ME NO FRESH BLOOD'_

"I had black pudding last week"

_'HUMAN BLOOD. FRESH LIFE'_

"It's rather difficult, you know"

_'I KNOW ALL'_

Ren only sighed. He knew that continuing to speak would only bring him further malheur.

_'DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY LITRES OF BLOOD THERE ARE IN ONE OF YOUR HUMANS?'_

He went to find himself another bottle of Pommard.

_'SHE HAS FIVE LITRES OF LIFE IN HER.'_

He stopped halfway through uncorking the new bottle.

"Wait a second. She?"

_'YOU OWE ME FIVE LITRES. YOU WILL HAVE THEM BY THE END OF THE YEAR'_

"Answer me." He was getting anxious, speaking fast "Who do you mean? Answer me."

_'IF YOU DO NOT COLLECT THEM YOURSELF THEN WE WILL'_

"We? Who are you? What are you-"

_'A BROKEN CONTRACT IS A BODY OVER WHICH WE HAVE DOMINION.'_

He stood. He stared into the smouldering ashes of the entity's eyes and found that his body had turned to lead. He couldn't move, couldn't advance. He was trapped within his own body as the flicker of a fire slowly illuminated his living room.

Flames licked the goat's hooves and all at once it became a perfectly spherical inferno. The heat and the light burned themselves into Ren's retinas as he remained frozen in space.

_'WE WANT THE GIRL. HUMAN LOVE IS FLEETING'_

The ball of flame flashed and disappeared into the darkness. Ren regained sovereignty over his limbs and made his way unsteadily back to his seat. He looked into the shadows. He looked at the furniture that was untouched by fire. He looked at the bottle of ridiculously expensive wine on the counter.

With a deep sigh, he opened the bottle and poured himself a generous glass. He was going to need it.


	2. Freud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have to put a warning for swearing and sexual themes first. 
> 
> There, now I have.

**Freud**

Sawara sat across from Kyoko at the Love Me office’s desk and watched her warily as she flicked through her newest project proposal file.

“Now, I know that since you’re nineteen already I can’t do anything to stop you if you wanted to take this on, but I would seriously consider what you’re getting yourself into with this one, Mogami-san”

Kyoko nodded politely and stood up, neatly tucking in her chair and picking up the folder of documents.

“Don’t worry, Sawara-san, I will”

She smiled respectfully and headed out of the door.

***

Later, she sat in the rather cramped changing room that acted as the Love Me section’s break space and deliberated over whether to accept the new job with Kanae.

“There’s no denying that it would boost your career,” said Kanae thoughtfully as she scrolled through something on her phone “Vie Ghoul’s at number four on the charts right now, and that paycheck’s pretty tempting to me.”

Kyoko looked at her in despair.

“I know,” she whined “I really need the money, but it’s the project itself that’s putting me off.”  
“Yeah, okay, it’s emo, but so what? They’re a visual kei band, it’s hardwired into them. Mio was kind of gothic, I’m sure you can pull it off.”  
“Noooooo,” wailed Kyoko “You don’t understaaaaaaand! Have you seen the storyboard?”

Kanae put down her phone and took the papers that Kyoko handed to her.

“What? There’s a shot composure outline? I’ve never had one of those provided before I’ve signed up.”

Kyoko sank her face into her hands and groaned.

“That’s just it- they needed to provide one for legal reasons. Keep reading, you’ll see.”

Kanae skipped over the filming dates and locations and fell silent as she began to scan the storyboard. It seemed fairly standard stuff to her at first: the lyrics described ‘shattered souls uniting under a blood moon’ and other similarly vacuous melodrama. According to the plan almost everything was to be in black and white, apart from a red apple of which they had an unnecessary number of artistic shots and a red cape that Kyoko was to wear. Dark woods, vampires, gothic emoting about life, she’d seen it all before-

Her eyes widened when she got to the seventh page. Kyoko took this to mean that she’d seen it.

“Mokoooooo~~ What do I doooooo?”

Kanae scanned to the end of the outline and then put down the file.

“Have they told you why you need to bathe topless in a vintage bath of milk in a forest clearing?”  
“Not at all! I haven’t had any direct contact from them.”  
“Hang on.” Kanae picked up her phone, switched it on, and began to tap something into google “They aren’t going to age-restrict the video, are they?” she held the search results page up so that Kyoko could see it “Otherwise this thing would be like, super illegal”

Kyoko took back the document and hummed pensively. She found the legalities page and poked her friend lightly in the arm when she happened upon the right clause.

“Apparently because they’re shooting from behind and, um,” she stumbled and reddened, causing Kanae to raise an eyebrow in concern “well, the viewers won’t see my, uh, nipples, it’s alright.”  
“Still, are you comfortable with that?”  
“The artistic director is a woman, and they say that they’d be fine with using an all-female crew for that part.”  
“No, Kyoko,” said Kanae, grabbing her by her shoulders and looking her hard in the eyes “I mean are you comfortable with being paid for visuals rather than acting; are you comfortable with being paid to take your top off, are you comfortable with the way that this will change your public perception?”

Kyoko sighed. She pulled on a loose strand of hair and guiltily looked at her lap.

“I’m actually... Well, I’d sort of quite like to play the victim for once. All my roles until now have been the bad guy, and I don’t really want to be type-cast like that for the rest of my career. I know this is weird and not really serious acting, but it will get me good roles later.”

Kanae continued to frown at her disapprovingly.

“It’s your career, not mine.”

***

Kyoko sat opposite the director named Fuyumi and neatly penned her signature at the bottom of the contract. The older woman smiled with an emotion that vaguely resembled relief and stood to shake her hand once the pen had been put down.

“I have to say, I’m very relieved that you took this. We weren’t sure whether you were going to take the offer.”  
“Thank you for providing me with this chance, Fuyumi-san. I wanted to try something new.”  
“No problem, no problem at all! We’ll see you at the filming location in three days time, then.”

Thus it was that Kyoko Mogami found herself deep in the Karuizawa woods at an ungodly hour in the morning.

She was just nodding off again when a sharp tug on her hair by the beautician who was applying her long black wig startled her awake. The makeup artist who was applying her foundation mumbled a quick apology in the others’ stead and began to go in with the lipstick.

Kyoko blearily resisted rubbing her eyes and watched the other Vie Ghoul members get ready from the edges of her peripheral vision. Though most of them had been similarly groggy and polite to a fault, she was making a point of never being caught alone with any of them. She knew that Reino was definitely bad news, and furthermore that he could do some creepy, inexplicable stuff, and wasn’t really ready to run the risk of any of the others also being rotten apples.

Speaking of apples, the camera crew had been shooting multiple angles of red apples in various stages of decay for about an hour now. Madness.

A tinkling chime and a few grunted curse words drew her attention to the bassist of the band, who had just tripped over the chains on his pretentiously over-laden outfit. She held back a laugh as the costume department berated him for ruining the last half-hour’s work and finally stood up when prompted by her two stylists.

Someone handed her a heavy red cloak, and she carefully tied it around her neck. The soft weight of the warm velveteen fabric was strangely comforting. Kyoko felt her nervousness subside, and rolled her shoulders back into perfect posture as she strode onto set for her first scenes.

In fact, she reflected from Reino’s lap two hours later, she didn’t need to worry about acting at all. So far, she hadn’t faced the camera a single time, and was being treated more as a prop than anything else. She had endured sitting on each of the band members’ laps and pretending to be bitten, but was now stuck with Reino. It made her skin crawl.

“CUT!” cried the director for the fourth time now “Re-take!”

Kyoko sighed. She wasn’t even facing the camera, how was she meant to what was going wrong? She had a sneaking suspicion that Reino was purposefully getting it wrong in order to keep making her uncomfortable.

“Mogami-san,” called the director, and she swiveled around to face her “could you react a bit more strongly please?”

She tried her best to look straight at her without getting her wig caught in Reino’s jewelry.

“Um, how?”  
“We want something sensual, borderline erotic. You don’t need to full-on moan because we’re cancelling the noise in post-prod for the video anyway, but maybe a little gasp?”

Fuyumi was evidently trying her best not to make Kyoko upset, but was also genuinely passionate about the project. She wanted everything exactly the way that she envisioned it.

Kyoko twisted her torso back around again and glowered at Reino as he wrapped a clawed hand around her waist. He snickered.

“Having a hard time?”

She increased the intensity of her glare and sat silently, waiting for the cameraman’s signal. She hated the way that he’d been constantly leering at her, hated the way that he used every excusable opportunity he had to run his hands all over her body. Most of all, she hated the way that he was now looking down on her. She was an actress, not a plaything, damnit! How dare he treat her exclusively as a sex object and then mock her for trying to do her job? She struggled to keep the anger bubbling underneath the surface at bay.

She’d show him.

“Action!”

She felt the warmth of his breath on her neck as he leaned down and bit the section of greenscreen that had been taped to her collar bone. Without hesitation, she bucked her head back, sending her hair fluttering dramatically, and let out a heavy gasp that hung in the air. She pushed the sound from the very back of her throat, giving it a raw, guttural quality that dripped with sensuality and rang throughout the silent set.

“CUT!”

The director stood up and gleefully waved her arms about.

“Excellent, Mogami-san! Well done. Let’s move onto the next scene.”

Kyoko turned her head towards Reino’s just enough to make sure that his eyes caught hers when she self-satisfactorily smirked, and hopped off of his lap.

She hurried to the changing tents, crunching over the dry leaves on the ground and contentedly reviewing the next scene’s requirements in her head. She took her quasi-red-riding-hood costume from the clothing rack and headed to the nearest open tent.

She was surprised to find that the bassist who had tripped up earlier was sat reading not that far from the tent’s entrance. He was leaning against a tree, the feathers on his leather jacket sticking out from behind the trunk. He didn’t bother to look up as she approached, until she was barely a metre away, and when he did it was with disdain. Even though he was physically below her, she felt certain that he was the one looking down.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m here.” He paused “Please.”

She stepped into the open tent and zipped the door closed behind her. She was suspicious.

“Why?”  
“I’m hiding”

She took off her cloak and began the complicated process of doing up the lace-piped corset of her current costume.

“Why?” she insisted.

She heard the quiet flick of a book page turning.

“Because this is all bullshit, that’s why.”

She didn’t reply as she finished tying a bow at the bottom of the corset and pulled up her stockings. She could tell that he was ready to launch in a long and pre-meditated speech anytime soon, and couldn’t deny that she was curious about what he had to say.

She heard the leaves crisp as he put down his book.

“I mean, as soon as we make it into the top ten, Reino just decides that we’re going to be complete sellouts. As if he can make that decision himself, without the rest of the band’s approval, anyway. I wanted to focus on composing a meaningful song, but noooooooo, Mr. Leader Of The Band has to go and audience-pander and go for sexy vampires.” He huffed in frustration. “Sexy vampires? Really? They were cool, like, a decade ago. How obvious does he want to make it that we’re just indulging the self-insert fantasies of teenage girls?”

He sighed deeply. Kyoko finished rearranging her skirt and began to unzip the tent entrance again. She stuck her head out of the open flap.

“I thought that the vampire thing was your artistic expression? Because you’re like, visual kei, or something…”

She trailed off as she noticed him glaring lasers into her skull.

“You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about, do you?”

She sheepishly bowed her head.

“Um, no?”  
“Visual Kei is all about breaking societal boundaries, expression of the self, exploring humanity’s innate darkness… not just about looking gothic.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
“And this whole vampire concept is just thinly veiled sexual imagery, nothing to do with artistic exploration.”

Kyoko eyes widened in shock and concern.

“Thinly veiled what?”  
“Sexual imagery.”

She spluttered.

“Wait, wait, what do you mean?”  
“I mean the biting? You seriously can’t see that one? The teeth, you know, penetrating the flesh.”

Kyoko paled and staggered a little, gripping the tent fabric to hold herself up.

“And the sharp teeth? Phallic imagery. At least on a subconscious level, we relate vampires to sex. Freudian, huh? Some people even theorise that the garlic superstition relates back to it.”

Hang on a second, in what ungodly context were garlic and sex related?

“Wait, what?”  
“It was garlic flowers originally. They represent virginal purity, so if you take into account traditional Christian values, it makes sense.”  
“Oh, I… I suppose, yes.”

She finally stood straight and smoothed out her cloak once more.

“MOGAMI-SAAAAAAAN!”

The makeup assistants were calling for her. She turned and quickly bowed to Shizuru the bassist before hurrying off.

He picked up the book and sighed heavily.

“Fucking Freud.”

***

Kyoko stood facing a particularly dense patch of wood and waited for the cameraman’s signal. She was buzzing with excitement.

She had been presented with a piece of genuinely challenging acting for the first time that day, and was eager to see where it would lead.

Sure, it seemed easy at first glance: she was just running away from the camera, into the woods. But she had to run with emotion. She had to use her very steps, her feet alone, to show the terror and hope in the nameless character’s heart. It sounded like a good way to expand her acting repertoire.

“3… 2… 1… ACTION!”

She heard a faint pop as the seven VFX team members behind her ripped open large bags of white feathers and shook them vigorously. They fluttered like summer snow around her as she began to run.

My god, she felt free.

She pumped her legs as hard as she could, ignoring the pain building from her high-heeled feet as she leaped over gnarled roots and crouching flowers. She heard nothing but the rushing of the air around her and the beating of her heart, felt nothing but the steady patter of the ground disappearing underfoot and the warm summer air becoming cool as it whipped through her long obsidian wig. A strange and primordial joy poured into her like pure, radiant light as the outside faded out into the nothingness of movement. So this was what it meant, to breathe, to be alive! It had been so long since she had felt this way.

The absolute silence of the trees around her and the absence of feathers following her on the breeze made her remember that she had been running for a long time now. Why hadn’t the director called cut?

She jogged to a stop in a clearer patch and turned around. She couldn’t see the director, or the cameraman, or the crew.

She was breathing heavily, her entire body heaving against her tight corset with each quick inhalation. Where were they? Where was she?

Her breathing refused to slow as she began to whip around in confusion. All she could see were the towering pillars of ancient trees, their knots like ominous eyes that watched her pitilessly. There was nothing as far as the eye could see but the silent forest and herself.

“FUYUMI-SAAAAAAN?!” she shouted, cupping her hands against her mouth to carry the sound further, “FUYUMI-SAAAAAN? ANYONE?”

Silence. She was definitely lost.

She stood there, catching her breath, for a few minutes and deliberated what to do. How big were the Karuizawa woods again? Getting even more lost could mean serious danger.

She’d run in a straight line though, right? If only she could find the way she’d come…

She was startled from her thoughts by the sound of shuffling leaves growing nearer, accompanied by the occasional twig snapping. She took up a defensive stance in apprehension as she saw the figure step into the small clearing.

“Ah, how nice to run into you!” Reino said with an ill-intentioned smile.  
“Back off, creep.”

He stepped forwards. The spikes on his costume glinted menacingly in the green light that filtered through the foliage overhead.

Kyoko made to move back but discovered that her limbs seemed to have faded onto another plane of being. She could not exert her will upon them, and found in her conscious a strange, tingly, existential television static where her legs should have been. She could do nothing but watch as he advanced silently upon her.

His steps were slow, deliberate. His head was hung low but his eyes locked on hers as he slinked gracefully forwards, leopard-like. Kyoko felt her head cloud with the blurriness of darkened water as the closeness of his tall frame cast a dark shadow over her, and then felt lucidity whistle back, fire-hot, when one of his long nails grazed her jaw-bone. Every nerve in her body seemingly existed to feel in perfect precision his fingers on her skin. Her lips burned painfully against his touch as he leaned closer in.

She felt another sensation rocket into bloom as his second hand made its way around her waist and to her back, where it began to forcefully tug at the lacing of her corset. Her entire body swayed as he continued to aggressively yank, ignoring the quiet whimpers that escaped her. With a terrible snap, the ribbons tore in two and the ruffled casing around her ribs fell loose.

She stood in silent terror and desperately willed her lips to move. She strained urgently as his hand snaked under her blouse and finally croaked, like a dying gasp, the few words that she could muster.

“Stop… How…”

Reino shifted his gaze from her struggling face to her pulsing jugular. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, revealing sharp white fangs that glistened moistly in the cooling air.

“You can buy a lot with a single soul”

He moved his mouth, slightly ajar, to her neck. She could feel the tips of his teeth like knife-points, ready to spear her twitching flesh.

“REINO?”

The addressee whipped around and scowled as he saw Shizuru leaning against a tree.

Kyoko felt life rush back into her body and collapsed onto her knees, shakily keeping herself steady with two arms propped on the forest floor. She erratically gulped air, accentuating her now open blouse and the tender skin exposed by it as gusts of air blew the front placket to and fro. Tears welled in her eyes and she felt a tide of nausea sweep over her. She felt terrible.

“Dude, what are you doing? Fuyumi-san’s been looking for you for ages.”

Reino only grunted and stalked past him into the foliage. Shizuru glared at him and then turned in alarm to the girl on the ground. Her brow was furrowed and her lips trembled as he helped her up.

“Hey, are you okay?”

She didn’t reply.

“Hey, this was… consensual, right?”

She shook her head and tremulously began to button her shirt back up.

“Oh, shit. Fuck, I’m sorry. You should… You should report this to someone on set.”

Kyoko rubbed at her eyes and nodded uncertainly. She began to warily step towards him.

“Sorry, you both sort of just disappeared from set simultaneously and we had a really hard time tracking you down. I’ll” he hesitantly looked her over “I’ll walk back with you, if you’d like”

They began to walk back through the dense trees. Kyoko’s breathing calmed and her panic subsided, but was immediately replaced by boiling anger. This was the second time that that weirdo had been creepy and taken advantage of his weird… abilities. She’d let the last incident in Karuizawa drop on the advice of her manager, but if this experience had taught her anything, it was that Reino could not be trusted under any circumstances. She would finish the job, collect her paycheck, and then warn every manager she ran into about him.

She breathed calmly in and then out. Only one more day to go…

As they walked silently through the lofty Asian pines that surrounded them, Kyoko remembered how quickly summer nights fell. In only five minutes or so, the leaves above them morphed from green to brilliant crimson, to lustrous gold, to shy lilac and finally settled to the deep blue which was sprinkled with stars and sang to her of the moon’s coming.

The susurration of the dark woods was interrupted by a faint, ululating noise.

“Shhhhh,” she said, putting a finger to her lips “do you hear that?”

Shizuru kept walking and frowned at her.

“Uh, no?”  
“There, from over there.”

It was clearly distinguishable now, distinct. A low, sustained bleat.

Kyoko stopped walking. Two pinpricks glowed yellow in the darkness beyond. The softly obscured forms of curled horns and a white-haired snout were illuminated by the acerbic light. A goat.

“Do you see that?”  
“What? Where?”  
“There, the goat.”

He was looking out in the exact same direction as her, but seemed unenlightened.

“Where? Where would a goat even come from?”  
“I don’t know, just-”

She looked to the bright, flickering lights of the camera crew coming into view at the end of the tunnel of trees, then back again to where the strange bovid had been. It had disappeared.

“Hey, you’re kinda creeping me out right now. Let’s just get to the rest of the crew.”  
“Uh, yeah.”

She found the bare bones of the production crew remaining in the clearing where they’d been filming for the majority of the day. Fuyumi worriedly explained that the shot had come out alright and that they had all been terribly worried that she hadn’t heard them call cut. In the end, a few little pleasantries were exchanged and the remainder of the staff began to leave.  
Kyoko was initially pleased by this state of affairs, until she realised that the bus that she’d been planning on taking back to the hotel along with the others had long since departed. She explained the situation to Shizuru, who was waiting for his girlfriend to come and pick him up, and he leant her his phone, suggesting that she call a friend not only to get a lift but also to get that afternoon’s stress off her mind.

She dialed and pressed the call button.

“Kyoko? Isn’t it awfully late for you to be calling me?”  
“Yes, well, a lot has happened…”  
“Oh, your first day of filming, right?”  
“Yes…”

She trailed off and there was briefly silence.

“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”  
“Um… No…”  
“Kyoko Mogami, if you do not tell me what happened within the next ten seconds I swear to God almighty that I’ll never ever speak to you again”

Kyoko nearly dropped the phone as she scrambled in shock.

“Wait- wait! Moko-saaaaaan!”  
“Seven… Six… Five…”  
“Argh! Fine!”

Kanae stopped counting down and waited for Kyoko to continue.

“So, um… I sort of got lost? And I was found by Reino, but he was really creepy, and he ruined my costume.”  
“Is that the whole story?”  
“Yes!”  
“Then why do I get the feeling you’re hiding something from me?”

Kyoko panicked as she saw Shizuru look over inquisitively. She made a quick smile and resumed.

“I promise I’ll tell you everything later! I just, I think I’d prefer to talk to you face to face, you know?”  
“You promise?”  
“Of course!”

Kanae’s disgruntled sigh frizzled through the speaker.

“Why are you always getting into trouble when I’m not there?”

Kyoko sheepishly tugged on a loose strand of hair.

“Well, about that…”

***

  
She and Shizuru had both been pleasantly surprised when Kanae said that she’d sent someone their way. Kyoko was mildly suspicious of Kanae’s sarcastic tone before signing off, but her blind faith in her friend was strong enough that she politely declined Shizuru’s girlfriend’s offer of a ride to the hotel and was now waiting for Kanae’s accomplice to arrive.

She was only left to wait for a few minutes in the starlit night before a car pulled up. A familiar car. Black, sleek, and expensive but not too expensive. Ren’s car.

He stepped out with a smile and simply said:

“Yashiro said you needed picking up.”

Her heart leapt at only the sight of him. There he was, illuminated by the car’s headlights, the glow behind his head creating the ethereal image of a halo. There he was, for her.

She was thankful for the cloak of darkness hiding her raging blush.

The car journey was silent not in awkwardness but mutual comprehension. Ren kept his eyes on the road ahead and Kyoko leaned her forehead on the window, watching the dark trees pass. Her eyes settled on the moon as they exited the forest and joined a smoother municipal road.  
The moon was exactly half full, at that halfway point where it is impossible to tell whether it is waxing or waning. It was at the in-between, the borderline, the breaking point. Something had to give. Would it become a perfect whole or be reduced to nothing?

It was these trivial thoughts that were on Kyoko’s mind as she drifted calmly off to sleep.

***

  
“Mogami-san?”

She awoke surprisingly gently for one who had been so soundly asleep and fluttered her eyes open. She blinked hard and then sat up.

The stark white light of the car’s headlights illuminated the front façade of a traditional Japanese townhouse. Kyoko was confused.

“Tsuruga-san,” she said “I don’t mean to be rude, but, um, where are we?”

He had already opened his car door and stepped out. He turned around and then leaned his head through the opposite window, his face now equally set in confusion.

“It’s the place I’m renting to stay near my film set. Yashiro told me that you were going to have to stay with me.”  
“I, uh, I have my own hotel room in Karuizawa.”  
“Ah,” replied Ren uncertainly “So nobody called you back to confirm the details of the situation?”  
“No.”

They spent a few seconds in silence as the cogs in their heads rotated into place. When it clicked that they had been wholly betrayed by their respective friends, they kicked back into life and Kyoko quickly clambered out of the car.

“Well, um, thank you for having me”

Kyoko could barely see his face as Ren unlocked the front door in the dark, but she hoped that she was not imagining the faint smile that graced his lips.

“It’s my pleasure.”

They entered the spacious and cool house and Ren switched on an old filament lamp that cast an orange glow over the tatami floor. He vanished briefly and reappeared with a spare towel and toothbrush for Kyoko, who gratefully took them and then negotiated the first use of the bathroom. Their interactions from that point on were few and quiet, but they were conducted with a comfortable and familiar understanding that remained in the air as they drifted off to sleep side by side, distanced only by a metre of bare tatami and their separate futons.

***

  
When Ren’s eyes opened, they did so accompanied by such a deep-seated sense of unease that he was unsure whether he was actually awake. The silence around him and the darkness of the night were so absolute that he believed himself to be almost entirely consumed by pitch black, blind and deaf. He sat up, waiting.

Light appeared to him in an achingly slow procession. Rather, it slithered. A snake clung to the rafters of the ceiling, its orange eyes glowing and slit pupils uncannily locked on his own. Once it had wound its way directly over Ren, it dropped gracefully down onto his shoulder, making neither noise nor the feeling of an impact as it landed.

_‘KUON’_

It spoke without words, serene and all-knowing as it began to wrap around his throat.

Ren’s eyes turned to the old clock hanging near the entrance. The second hand was frozen between numbers, silent. He then looked over to the girl beside him. She was perfectly still, chest slightly raised as if stuck halfway through a breath. He looked back to the snake that was winding its way up his neck.

“What do you want?”

_‘WE HAVE WANT OF NOTHING’_

Ren sighed.

“You know what I mean”

_‘WE KNOW ALL’_

He made the executive decision to shut up and impatiently waited for the inevitably inauspicious verdict of the devil itself.

‘ _SO LITTLE GIVEN. SO MUCH DEBT.’_

“I have knocked some off recently”

_‘SO LITTLE.’_

Ren was suspicious. This conversation (if it could be called that) was taking too long. What was its point?

_‘WE WOULD LIKE TO AVOID UNPAID DEBT. SO MESSY. I WILL HELP YOU’_

He noted the shift from plural to singular and the loosening of the coils around his larynx. Momentarily he was so entranced by the undulating movements of the scaled body that he could not find words. When they came rushing back to him, the implications of the serpent’s words were at the forefront of his mind.

“Help me? How? You’re not- You can’t- You can’t control my body yet, my time isn’t up.”

The snake slithered down his shoulder and onto his lap, and then began to glissade over to the body of the sleeping girl, frozen in time.

“You- She’s not- She hasn’t done anything wrong! You can’t-” his voice rose in panic as the snake began to slip its tail under the girl’s pyjamas “Don’t do anything to her!”

The snake stopped and perked its head back up, away from its body. It slowly turned to face him, orange eyes filled with the fires of hell.

It hissed, a long, piercing hiss, and then disappeared entirely.

Ren noticed the rhythmic ticking of the pendulum clock return, as well as Kyoko’s steady breathing from his side. He neatly pushed his covers back with his legs and shuffled backwards just enough so that he could lean on an old wooden beam. He couldn’t possibly go back to sleep now; he felt far too agitated.

He let his eyes wander to the girl next to him as they adjusted to the dark. The devil had slightly mussed her hair in the most adorable manner, and he was relieved that he didn’t have to hide his growing smile from her.

His gaze travelled slightly further and he saw that the snake had also disturbed her clothes. Her shoulder, adorned plainly in the healing scab of his bite mark, was laid bare in the cool air. It was not all that was exposed. A nipple and part of a small breast were uncovered by the open front of her shirt. He reddened and instinctively slapped his hands over his eyes, before quietly shuffling out into the kitchen in shame and embarrassment.

***

Kyoko woke up with a nosebleed. A really bad nosebleed. She sat up with a start as she realised that a warm trickle of red had made it just past her collarbone and onto her clothes, and then began cursing the pollen and countryside dry air as she cupped a hand under the bleeding nostril.

She stumbled over her futon and out of the room, trying desperately not to spill any blood on the vintage tatami under her feet. She was so preoccupied with watching her steps and craning her neck that she had entirely forgotten that she was not alone in the house. Of course, this realization came to her at breakneck speed when she accidentally walked into the kitchen counter and caught the attention of the man sat reading at it.

She dragged her eyes to him and lowered her hands out of instinctive politeness.

“I, um… nosebleed.” She eloquently summarised.

Ren didn’t reply. She could see his eyes, not meeting hers, reflecting crimson as they followed the stream of red.

There was silent understanding between them. Kyoko nodded shyly and he walked over to her, reminding her of how small she was in his shadow.

She closed her eyes and frowned in something between determination and anticipation as she felt his warm breath trail down her skin, and flinched upon the impact of his tongue on her clavicle. An unfamiliar sensation surged up her spine and she suppressed the impulse to shiver.

It was hard to put a name on what she felt as his tongue made its way up her neck. It was slightly ticklish, and altogether not unpleasant, but Kyoko couldn’t help but feel that something wasn’t quite right.  
She almost gasped when Ren’s lips pressed to her carotid. He was trying to gulp down the blood that had collected in his mouth, trying not to let anything slip away.

Kyoko decided that she liked this feeling. She couldn’t pinpoint why, just yet, but perhaps it was his closeness, or the sense of power that came from being truly wanted.

A question appeared in her mind, shattering the pleasant mood that had been building there. Was she just exploiting Ren for her own selfish gains? He was relying on her, trusting her, and she was using him to fuel her girlish affections. It was dishonest, too greedy.  
He wasn’t hers, he didn’t need her. Of course she wasn’t special just because she could give him what he needed- so could anybody else! If she led herself on like this any further, she would only end up hurt again. She stiffened as his tongue brushed the edge of one of her lips, and by the time that he had collected all of the blood at the base of her nose and leaned away, her face was set in grim indifference.

Ren seemed slightly heedful of her as she opened her eyes, possibly sensing that she was on guard. He reluctantly straightened up and stepped back, a hopeful smile on his lips as he said:

“Thank you”

***

Thanks to Ren’s efficient driving, Kyoko arrived on set perfectly on time. She got out of the car without his assistance, quickly thanked him, and then immediately hurried off.

It took her longer than she had expected to find the correct members of production staff, mainly because most of them were new. She supposed that she had always known that film was a male-dominated industry, but it became starkly obvious when the men were swapped out with women quite how deeply ingrained the issue was.

Nonetheless, she eventually found the costume department and was directed to a changing tent, where she began to disrobe as the director ran through the filming schedule for the day from the other side of the cubicle door.

“We’ll need to apply the bitemark makeup fisrt so that it has time to dry, of course.” Fuyumi continued, flicking the pages on her clipboard “We don’t want it to look too fresh, so that the viewer can extrapolate that the Red Riding Hood character is affected by her encounter with the vampires in the long-term. Adding on to that, I assume that it’s obvious you’re going to portray a feeling of melancholy and longing”

Kyoko gave a quick reply in the affirmative and unclipped her bra, neatly folding it into the box she’d been given for her clothes. That was when it clicked. Her shoulder!  
There was no way to hide it at all. Her entire torso was completely bare. Why had she not thought of this before? She shouldn’t have taken this job at all. What was she going to say? How was she going to explain the very human bitemark on her skin? Fuyumi was going to be so disappointed. The schedule would have to be rearranged, and the rumours amongst the crew would be inescapable.  
She stood, silent dread growing, and debated whether to get dressed again and face the music.

“Mogami-san? Is everything alright?”  
“Oh, uh, yes” she fumbled “I’m only a little, um, embarrassed is all”  
“Oh, we understand. Don’t worry, we’re all girls here!”

Kyoko was hit with a stroke of genius. She wrapped the towel she’d been provided around her thorax and walked confidently out. It was all about the bluff.

“I actually came prepared”

***

 

A week later, Kanae was lying on her bed reading one of her older sisters’ manga when a loud chime caught her attention. She put down her book and lazily groped her pillow for her phone, which she picked up and switched on.  
Her eyebrows raised slightly as she read the youtube notification. Vie Ghoul’s latest teaser was out.

She tapped her password in and hastily clicked her way to youtube, where she immediately found the short video that she was looking for.

She watched patiently for the thirty second run time, absorbing her friend’s acting with unadulterated pride, and at once sent her a congratulatory text (making sure, naturally, to sound reasonably blasé).

She rewatched the short clip a few more times, trying to find any clues about the actual release date, and once her curiosity had been depleted sent a link to Yashiro. They had been chatting on and off, and she hoped that this ostensibly work-related message would be the catalyst for another long late-night conversation.

Yashiro was waiting for Ren’s makeup to be removed at yet another remote rural filming venue when he got the text. Upon seeing who the sender was, he reflexively hit the link without questioning its nature, and was immediately absorbed in the out-of-character nature of the clip. He barely recognised Kyoko at first, and was absolutely shocked by her one-second topless appearance. When it was finished, he deliberated what to reply, and nearly had a heart attack when Ren appeared behind him.

His phone went flying into the dry hay on the countryside ground in shock, and he placed a hand on his heart to make sure that it was still pumping.

“Jesus Christ… It’s uncanny, how you do that.”

Ren narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“What have you been getting up to? I was only gone fifteen minutes.”

Yashiro leaned down to pick up his device and made the split-second judgment that it probably wasn’t the best idea to let Ren find out about this. He stood up and pushed up his glasses as he neatly put his phone away.

“Oh, nothing of importance.”

Ren still seemed doubtful. He decided to change the subject to one that seemed rather fitting, given the situation.

“We’d best be getting back to Tokyo, then. You’ll be able to see Kyoko at the LME tomorrow, she’s just finished her last job.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reasoning behind this chapter is a racy comment on the first chapter over on FF. I hadn't intended to go in this direction, but an examination of why we find vampires sexy did seem appropriate in the end. 
> 
> The next chapter will be a mix of heavy fluff and philosophy. You can decide for yourself if that sounds appealing.


	3. The Question of God

**The Question of God**

A summer storm was brewing. The morning sky hung low and grey, exerting a strange pressure over the city that made the yellowish smog glisten in the warm light. Everything smelled of dust and fever.

Kyoko felt a strange sense of foreboding as she cycled to a halt in front of the LME building. There was something not quite right hanging in the humid air, something she couldn’t yet pinpoint.  
Nevertheless, she chained her bike to the metal scooter frame and unclipped her helmet with her usual enthusiasm, and quickly made her way into the building.

The cool stream of coldness from an air conditioner hit her as soon as she stepped through the sliding glass doors that led to her familiar Love Me haunts, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she realised that she’d escaped the stifling Tokyo heat.  
The corridors were surprisingly empty, making her steps echo as she walked over the tiled floors. The silence remained as she pushed open the Love Me break space door.

“Huh”

Kyoko frowned. It wasn’t like Kanae to be late to work, and the metro system was running on time as usual.

She sighed, dumped her bag in a locker, and clambered onto a changing bench to switch on the ancient fan that acted as a crude cooling system for their under-funded group. Once the rattling blades had begun to spin at a sufficient pace to keep her from drowning in sweat, she sat down, unbuttoned the top of her shirt and tapped out a quick text:

‘Just arrived. Where r u?’

To her surprise she received a reply almost instantly.

‘In the sick bay. Yashiro has a cold.’

And then a second text.

‘Come over, u still gotta tell me about ur last job’

Kyoko was slightly confused by the set of circumstances that would have led to Kanae taking care of Yashiro, but her fierce love for her friend soon overrode her suspicious instincts and she began to proceed to the third floor.

She was surprised to find that faint words could be heard as her shoes clicked down the deserted corridor towards sick bay. The door must have been left ajar.

She recognised Kanae’s frustrated huff and tuned in to the conversation.

“Yeah, but you didn’t have to stay up that late. Look where it got you.”  
“I wanted to hear the rest of your story.”  
“It was three a.m.”

She stopped outside the door and knocked politely. The pair inside the room hushed and she took it as a signal to walk in.

Kanae was as deadpan as usual upon her arrival.

“You took your own sweet time.”

Kyoko grinned. A big, goofy grin. She hadn’t seen Moko in three days! She decided that there was no time like the present and launched into a full-frontal attack, hugging her to within an inch of her life.

“Mou, get off!”  
“But I have SO MUCH to tell yooooouuuuuu”

She was startled into relinquishing her iron clutch on Kanae by some breathy chuckles and then a few deep coughs from the brunet on the wheeled bed.

“Ah, Kyoko-chan, it’s good to see you in high spirits as always.”

She pulled her arms firmly to her sides and looked embarrassedly to the floor.

“Um, yes. Um-” She looked over and noticed that his briefcase was leaning on a chair “How are you doing?”

He coughed into his fist a few more times and then smiled weakly.

“Well, I suppose I could be worse. I sent the Actor Of The Year to get me some cough drops at the convenience store.”

Wait a second, Actor Of The Year? Of course! How had she been so blind? Wherever Yashiro went, he went too, which meant…

At that precise moment there was a knock on the door and the human skyscraper named Ren Tsuruga stepped in. She tried not to jump, but it was hard to ignore his almost menacing glowing smile. It shone like a million-watt lamp. Had she done something to annoy him?

“Ah, Ren-kun, thank you. Would you just pass me the- Yes, those ones.” Yashiro said, interrupting her increasingly worried train of thought.

Ren complied and Yashiro began to sort through the bag of medication.

“Yes, excellent. Gosh, this summer cold is proving to be really quite the bother.”  
“Indeed” replied Ren tersely, his smile still boring holes in his surroundings.  
“Well then,”

Yashiro pushed his glasses further up his nose, the lenses seeming to glint maniacally in the light that reflected off them. The faint outlines of a crooked smirk deformed his mouth slightly.

“I suppose you’ll need to find yourself a replacement manager for today. If only,” he said with almost theatrical emphasis “there was someone here who was available and knew what the job entailed.”

There was a pregnant silence. Yashiro turned on Kyoko with a beaming – menacing – smile, which was mirrored by that of Kanae, and finally by that of Ren. Kyoko couldn’t understand why Yashiro was suddenly showing a forceful side, or why her friend seemed to be anxious to play along with it, but most of all she couldn’t understand Ren’s patient, unreadable expression. What had happened between them? It was difficult to place their status now: coworkers? Friends? Something else?

She sensed the slow seconds tick on and eventually capitulated under the enormous strain of their gazes.

“Um, I, well I guess I could do it?” she ventured uncertainly.

Oh god, she could feel it already. This was such a bad idea. She should have stood up for herself, suggested someone else. Now she’d put herself in a situation that she couldn’t back out of.  
Before her thoughts could spiral to a darker place, Yashiro piped up, having once more returned to his usual cheerful manner.

“Perfect! Well, you’d better crack on, because you’re going to need to take the HST to the next film location in-” he checked his watch “An hour and fifteen.”

Kyoko’s eyes widened. She hadn’t been thrown into the deep end; she’d walked into Mariana’s Trench herself!

“I’ll go get my bags.” She said, simultaneously opening the door.

To her surprise, Kanae rushed after her.

“I’m coming with.” She self-assuredly followed, offering no further explanation and swiftly shutting the door behind them both.

Once they had briskly paced their way to the stairs, she furtively swept her head around to make sure that no one could hear them and then leaned in to her shorter friend.

“So were you going to tell me about the massive fucking bite mark, or…”

Kyoko turned to her in alarm as they descended another flight of stairs and curved onto the back corridor connected to their locker room.

“W-what? How-”  
“You can see it just past your right collar. Probably be a good idea to keep your shirt properly buttoned.”

She pushed open the Love Me break room door and Kyoko turned an impressive shade of beet red as it slammed shut.

“It’s, um, it’s nothing” she stammered, trying to distract Kanae’s attention by opening her locker and picking up her bag.

At first her friend didn’t reply. Then there was an almighty bang as she slammed the locker door closed and trapped Kyoko between her and the garishly pink storage units.

“Kyoko” she said, looking her in the eyes, “What happened? Are you okay? Were you attacked?”

Her eyes, overshadowed by the black trails of hair hanging low as she leaned in, glistened with a foreign emotion. Kyoko studied Kanae’s face in confusion. What was this ne- wait. Wait.

Was this concern?

The edges of her lips turned up and she held back a giggle. So that was what this was about.

“Well, this is- um, not in this case. I’ve worked things out with him now, myself. Things will be fine.”

Kanae moved her arm, but only to grab Kyoko by the shoulders.

“So you were attacked? Oh my god, Kyoko. How come you didn’t tell me right away? ”  
“I did, I called you. I wanted to have the time to talk to you about it face to face.”  
“Jesus Christ, it was that Reino creep, wasn’t it?”  
“NO! God no, that was… something else…”  
“Then what is this, huh? You expect me to sit quietly when you’ve been bitten?”  
“No, it’s just…”

Her eyes turned to anywhere other than Kanae’s.

“Just what?”  
“Like, this is sort of consensual now…”

She realised the implications of her words just as they escaped her lips. Hesitantly flitting her eyes to Kanae, she saw that her friend was positively aghast, and used the shocked pause to bolt.

She grabbed her bag and dashed down the corridor, not looking back. As she rounded the open lobby near the main stairwell, she heard a shout echo along the walls behind her.

“KYOKO MOGAMI, WHAT THE FUCK ?”

***

Kyoko watched the passing trees and fields blur into streams of liquid eden as the train gently rattled on, and Ren quietly flicked the page of a book beside her. Leaning against the glass window, she let her eyes lose focus, turning the countryside into a gradient of colour upon colour.

It wasn’t that things were necessarily bad between them. No, that was too strong a word to use. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe them as tense.  
Yes, that was it, tense. She couldn’t exactly avoid him in this situation, and she hadn’t been overly guarded during their conversations. Rather, he had been the one who was strangely closed off. Though his false smile had faded, the attitude that came with it had not. He seemed distant, aloof, a little detached from their interactions.

Was this her fault? She frowned as she reflected on her position. It was entirely possible.

Damn it.

She shifted her elbow to lean on her palm and stewed in her feelings of regret as they sped on. She held back a sigh. Not only did she have the blues, but she was also deathly bored.

Her eyes narrowed as she squinted to bring the rushing scenery before her back into focus, and she nearly jumped when she realised what she was seeing.

A large black bird, a raven, it appeared, was flying parallel to the window. It was remarkably graceful, its steady speed keeping it perfectly aligned with the path of the train and leaving its feathers smooth and unruffled. It turned its head slightly, and Kyoko noticed that it seemed to be making eye contact.

There was something uncanny about the way that its eyes locked onto hers. It was deliberate, knowing. The irises, though pitch black, had the paradoxical effect of looking like they glowed darkness. She stared into them, strangely fixated by their swirling depths, the way that they fell further and further into the inky midnight, the way that they pulled her in, the way that they surrounded her, drowned her in molten onyx.

She knew there was something wrong with this. She shouldn’t have been able to see what she saw through this creature’s eyes. She shouldn’t have been able to feel her senses slowly clogging with obsidian oil, feel the pressure of time unraveling in her skull. There was something wrong with this bird. What was it?

Her breathing slowed and her head spun as her eyes found nothing but darkness. The touch and sound of reality around her were obscured, as though experienced from behind a thick layer of glass. Something was wrong. Something wa-

“Mogami-san?”

She left the realm of the black hole with a bitter lurch. Her head was unhappily light, and she had difficulty lifting her shivering chin so that she could meet Ren’s gaze.

“Is everything alright?”

After a slow, deep breath she brought a hand to her forehead to steady herself.

“Yes, um,” Her words were slurred and drawn out “No, it’s- There’s- There’s this bird.”

The pointed an unsteady hand to the raven flying alongside them. It turned and stared into his eyes. A look of unhappy understanding dawned on Ren’s face. He put down his book and began to get out of his chair.

“Would you like to swap seats?”

Kyoko decided that she would like that very much.

***

Kyoko leaned on a tree and gazed up to the heavens as she waited for Ren to get changed at the end of the filming day. The clouds were grey and ominous here as well, and the humidity of being on set in the middle of the fields all had been almost unbearable.

Still, things were cooling down as the sky neared sunset, and the faint chirping of evening cicadas was gradually growing into a soothing orchestra for her weary ears. A breeze was picking up, and they would only have a fifteen minute walk on the tree-lined path to the small village where they could catch the train.

She watched the clouds begin to orange as the hidden sun sank for a few more minutes, and then was joined by Ren, who had just finished for the day. Together they politely said their goodbyes to the remaining staff on set and then began to walk back through the light forest to the station.

Ren had loosened up over the course of the day. After the incident on the train, he had once more seemed to be more protective than his own manager, and had helped her with her workload throughout the filming process.  
A warm breeze rippled through the low-hanging boughs above and ruffled his black hair as they walked along in comfortable silence. He laughed a little when Kyoko got some leaves stuck in her hair, and helped her untangle them, all the while smiling. And how he smiled! A true Gene Kelly smile, wide and leonine and brimming with a warmth that she hadn't seen in so long.  
Looking at him try to hide the boyish grin spreading across his face, and observing the way that his cheeks lifted, slightly obscuring his eyes, Kyoko remembered once more why she loved him.

She shook herself from her love-struck dumbness and hastily thanked him, waving her hands a little to distract him from the blush that was roaring across her cheeks. She was happy.

The sun ebbed closer and closer to the low horizon as they walked along, bathing everything in that lilac of twilight where it is impossible to tell what the sky holds in store, and all the world seems to quietly fall asleep. Kyoko frowned as a low growl rattled across the path. The rumble grew and spilled down the slopes of the fields around them. Thunder.

Ren turned and caught her eye just as a flash of lightning seared into the darkening air, blinding. Rain drops came tumbling down, a few at first, and then falling in hoards that beat the dry ground with the tapping of distant applause.

They retreated into the treeline, peering out from behind the relative protection of the branches overhead.

"What shall we do?" Ren ventured.

Kyoko tentatively held a hand out into the open. She withdrew it only seconds later, completely soaked.

"It's really bad."  
"So should we wait it out?"

Kyoko searched her pockets for their train tickets, picked them out, and then flicked through them exasperatedly.

"We'll risk missing the train back"

Ren looked her right in the eyes. He had the expression of a child playing tag.

"Let's make a run for it"  
"On the count of three, then"  
"One… Two…" He swiped his light jacket from his shoulders, and in the same fluid movement dropped it onto hers. "Three"

They dashed out from under the green, feet slapping the uneven ground as it turned to mush beneath them. Mud splashed up onto their socks as they madly ran, eagerly leaping over brambles and fallen logs.

With a flap and a loud caw, a large black bird flew suddenly out of the bushes in front of Kyoko. She gasped and tripped as she swerved to avoid its obsidian wingspan, causing her foot to slip in the uneven sludge of the path.  
Her arms were quickly flung before her in order to cushion the fall, but alas, she had not realised that she was falling into a bramble bush.  
Thorns and spiky branches scratched her skin in a myriad of different places as she went, until she finally hit the ground. She shakily looked up, battered and bleeding, to Ren, who had stopped running and was now leaning precariously over the tangled twigs. He extended a hand, which she took, and he carefully helped her up.

She finally stood, a little muddy and legs absolutely wrecked, and laughed a little. The skin on her kneecaps had been scraped off, and they were stinging viciously, whilst a long cut along her right calf was now leisurely bleeding red. Really, it was ridiculous, her capability for injury.

"Are you alright?"  
"Oh, yes I think I'm fine, really"

She tried to prove her point by striding decisively towards him, but hissed a little halfway through the step as the tingling pain came back. Ren raised a critical eyebrow. She laughed a little again.

"You can lean on me if you'd like"

Kyoko took in his sopping form, his hair plastered back to his skull and his light shirt now clinging to his lean chest.

She was glad that she could blame her light blush on the slight shiver that she was probably in the process of catching.

"Well, if it's alright".

She leaned delicately on his outstretched arm, and they began to slowly walk through the pouring rain. Ren walked at a slow and calculated pace, always making up for Kyoko’s hobbling and helping her balance whenever she nearly tripped.

By the time that they had arrived back at the entrance to the forest, the local church bells were chiming ten o’clock. Kyoko shivered as they reached the stone paving of the village streets.

“That means we’ve just missed our train”

They kept walking.

“When’s the next one?”  
“Midnight. We’ll have to-” She sneezed “We’ll have to find somewhere to wait. The station closes in between.”

They rounded onto the main village square. The late summer night had now fallen, and in the obscurity of the dark and the falling rain, the flickering light of two old streetlamps seemed to dance and bend. The writhing yellow beams twisted and swayed their way to the far end of the cobbled square, where they illuminated the harsh outlines of a large set of wooden double doors.  
Lightning flashed, lighting the village in brilliant white, and for an instant the grand, towering stone arches of the building were clear. It was a church.

Ren looked to Kyoko, shaking with cold at his side. She looked up at him, face set in grim determination. They seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

A minute later, the church’s heavy oak doors groaned open as the pair heaved at them and then stumbled through into the dry space. Ren sat down on the nearest pew, whilst Kyoko took the much easier route of simply collapsing into a sitting position against it. She was breathing heavily from the combined exertion of opening the doors and her body’s efforts to keep her warm. One of her small hands made it to her head, sweeping back the masses of wet hair from her eyes.

“We made it.”

Ren nodded in reply. He then realised that he could see her awfully well for an unlit room, and looked about to their surroundings. Sure enough, very little light was making it through the tall, red, stained-glass window of a saint with closed eyes behind the altar. Instead, a warm glow emanated from the presence of a candle fitfully burning in a far alcove.

“Wait here” he said, standing up, and made his way to the back of the church.

Something compelled him to avoid the eyes of the crying saint in the window as he picked up the candle and walked back to the front with it. He placed it next to Kyoko and then sat down beside her, separated by the small fire between them.

“Thank you, Tsuruga-san”

He smiled.

“It’s no problem.”

She sniffled a little before replying. At first Ren thought that it was from her cold, but then he noticed that her eyes were red and puffy too.

“I’m so sorry” she croaked, covering her face with her trembling hands “I’m sorry, I was meant to be your manager and I was meant to help you but I couldn’t do anything. God, this is all my fault. I’m so useless, I didn’t mean- I didn’t mean to…”

She lost the end of her sentence as her breaths became heavy and quivering. Ren’s heart raced in alarm.

When was the last time that he’d comforted a crying person without the protection of a script? He remembered now that humans were unpredictable, didn’t always do exactly what he wanted them to. He needed to improvise, to act his feelings on the spot once more. He was back in acting school all over again.

“It’s alright Mogami-san” he ventured “none of this is your fault.”  
“b-but…” she tried to interject between sniffles. Ren would not let her.  
“None of this could be helped, and it’s only right to take care of someone that’s been injured. I’m perfectly happy to spend a little more time with you as we wait for the train.”

He didn’t get a reply. He leaned back and sat in silence for a few minutes as she tried to calm her breathing, paying attention to the growing steadiness of her heaving chest – by listening, of course, as her white shirt was soaked through and perfectly clingy and see-through, and he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

When the candle had burned a little lower and Kyoko had calmed down, a long silence grew. Surprisingly, it was her who broke it. She turned to Ren, her eyes slightly red but still glimmering with the passion that usually burned there.

“Tsuruga-san, can I ask you something?”

His heart skipped a beat. This was dangerous. But, thinking over it, if he refused then they’d probably sit in awkward silence for the next hour and a half if he refused, so he eventually succumbed to his curiosity.

“Yes, Mogami-san, of course.”

She drew close; curious, excited.

“How come you’re allowed in here?”  
“Allowed?”  
“I mean, being as you’re a vampire, and all.”  
“Oh, I…”

Hang on a second. How come he could be here? It’s true, he hadn’t been in a church since… well, the deal. He’d never had to think about it before, but now that the question had been posed, it was frustratingly out of reach.

“I don’t actually know” he finished.  
“Oh.”

She didn’t pull back, still fixing a strangely enthusiastic stare on him. He tried not to let his gaze linger too long on her lips, still wet from the rain that they’d escaped.

“Um, can I ask another one?”

His eyes whipped back. He inexplicably felt more at ease now. He supposed that it couldn’t hurt.

“Go ahead”

She bristled with anticipation.

“Does the fact that you’ve sold your soul to the devil necessitate the existence of a Christian God?”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“Sorry?”  
“I mean, I’ve never been to church in my entire life. If there’s proof that western God exists, then I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”  
“I…”

He went shuddering back to that dark hospital hall, all those years ago. That hall, the neon lighting, the smell of disinfectant. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be there.

“I… I don’t think that it quite works like that. I’m not sure that it was the Christian devil that I saw, but more of a…”

He mind flashed with incoherent images of that night. What had he seen? All that he had now were memories of memories of memories. Pain and darkness painting layers over each other.

“Just, it was just a creature of evil. I don’t know how I knew but I knew. Maybe that means that there is a Christian God out there, or a million Hindu gods, or , or I don’t know, or the eight Buddhist gods. Maybe there’s something out there, or maybe there isn’t”

The rain continued to crash down outside. Lightning flashed.

Kyoko opened her mouth slightly to speak, but was interrupted by a loud, low caw that echoed through the stone hall. A raven sat on a statue of the Virgin Mary, watching.

Ren and Kyoko turned to look at it, squinting in the dimness. Their hands on the floor made their way unconsciously closer.

The raven crowed again. Its feet and the edges of its dark plumage glistened as though dipped in gold, and the unnaturally mannered cock of its head looked slightly off. At its claws an otherworldly fire burned, giving the painted burning heart of the statue behind it new life.  
It opened its beak, but the sound that came from it was obscured by a rumble of thunder.

Something all-consuming – perhaps lightning, perhaps something else, flashed with burning brilliance, and at once Ren and Kyoko became aware that they were surrounded. On all sides, thousands of black birds perched, poised as if ready to take flight. They were on the pews, in the alcoves, atop the pillars and in the roof beams. They were on the altar, the organ, the votive candle stands and circling over head. They were everywhere. A sea of black feathers and black eyes engulfed them, fluttering nearer, trapping them closer together.

A multitude of black beaks opened in unison. A single, deafening crow rang and soundless words washed into their minds like an ocean storm.

_‘WONDERING. ALWAYS WONDERING.’_

“What,” cried Kyoko “are you? What are you doing? Stay back!”

_‘FOOLISH MORTAL. YOU HAVE CALLED ME ANGRA MAINYU, SATAN, ILBIS AND SHAYATEEN. YOU HAVE CALLED ME MANY THINGS AND YET YOU KNOW NOT WHAT I AM. QUESTION US NOT.’_

“What do you want from us?” said Ren, voice cold and steady “Why have you come to us both?”

_‘SILENCE’_

The raven with gilded wings flew from its holy perch and settled, wings outstretched, floating in mid-air before the mourning transparent saint.

_‘WE HAVE COME TO REMIND YOU. TO HELP YOU.’_

The flapping of a thousand black wings sent obsidian feathers fluttering throughout the air. The chaos of air being forced and whirled as birds took flight became a spiraling vortex around the human pair.

 _‘BLOOD’_ the voices in their heads demanded _‘BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD’_

The chattering and squawking rose in a circling crescendo and then, with the same abruptness as it had come, it vanished entirely. Only a single gold-tipped feather on the altar marked that anything had happened at all.

Kyoko let go of a breath that she hadn’t realised she was holding.

“What was that?” She asked “Was that the same thing as-”

She stopped halfway, having noticed that the man beside her was curled into himself. His breaths were ragged and his arms twitched a little, as though in pain. The sheen of a thin sweat moistened his brow.

“Tsuruga-san?”

Ren looked at her as though through a thick mist. He could only hear the faint reverberations of her words, and he was trembling too much to keep his gaze steady. His head was heavy, filled with the ebb and flow of her pulse resounding through him. He shuddered as his eyes fixed on the trickle of red running down from a gash on her thigh. He needed blood. He needed her.

“Please.”

It came out as a whisper, at once pathetic and powerful.

He couldn’t hear her reply through the clouds in his head, but her lips parted to mouth a word that had to be ‘yes’.

He instinctively leaned over to her, pressed close by the lack of space between pews. One arm pressed against her waist, pushing her body back, and the other grabbed a thigh, pulling her soft flesh towards him. His mouth was drawn to the source of the blood, and Kyoko gasped as he slid his tongue over the broken skin. In that moment he was nothing but salt and iron and the immediate freshness of rainwater on her skin. He felt nothing but her. As he licked the blood away, he began to suck at the wound. What he had wasn’t enough. He wanted more, he wanted more of her.  
His lips began to travel further upwards, and then a whimper from Kyoko brought him back to reality.

He immediately relinquished his grip, and nearly fell over as he hastily stood up. He averted his eyes from the sight of her spread over the bench, and busied himself with wiping the blood from his lips and stammering out an apology.

Kyoko stood up demurely, turning her head to the door so that he could not see her face but instead the back of her neck and ears, which were a stunning shade of red. She coughed politely.

“I think we’d better go to the station now”

***

Kanae met the pair with a waiting taxi at the Tokyo terminal. It was two in the morning, and she looked like she would really rather be in bed.

This didn’t, of course, stop her from casting a critical eye over the pair as they got into the car. They were late. What’s more, they were both soaked to the bone. Kyoko’s hair was in quite a state, and her legs were even worse. She raised a critical eyebrow as she told the driver to hit the gas.

“You two have a lot of explaining to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The speed of a high speed train (HST) is 125mph, whilst the maximum speed of a raven in 50mph. Just so you know.


	4. Step Ladder

**Stepladder**

  
“Bullshit”

Kyoko faltered a little from atop a stepladder, but made sure to keep a firm grip on the corner of the enormous poster she was holding in place.

“No, it’s not!”

Kanae turned to fix a stare at her as she pasted the third corner down. She used generous, forceful strokes, as if to emphasise her point.

“Oh, it absolutely is. You’ve always been terrible at lying, and I think we both know that that is not what’s going on.”  
“Moko, I-”

Kanae shot her a look that told her to shut up, and she resigned to silently fixing the last portion of the paper to the wall. She carefully stepped down once she was done, folding up the ladder and picking up the paste pot. Up ahead, Kanae hadn’t waited, and was walking resolutely without her. The aluminium ladder rattled as Kyoko jogged after her, trying to catch up whilst balancing the equipment.

Their quickening footsteps echoed metallically through the quiet corridors as they walked, chased. Kanae’s black hair fluttered as they passed an air conditioning unit, revealing a knitted brow and continually shifting eyes.

“Moko-”

Her feet fell further behind with each step. Kanae grew more and more distant as the tins of glue in her hand clanged with speed.

Before them the path curved and opened onto the LME lobby, their last poster location. Kanae strode quickly across to the blank wall that they were to work on, and Kyoko followed unsteadily after, aware not to cause a nuisance for any of the young starlets that could pass through at any minute.

Finally faced with a wall, and with her friend still ignoring her, she set up the stepladder and readied a paste brush. She looked around for the people in the room as Kanae began to put the poster in place, and, upon finding that only the nameless secretary was there, turned urgently back to her friend.

“Moko,” she whispered “please, I-”

Kanae whipped around to face her, vicious.

“You what, exactly?” she snapped “You’re obviously lying to me, but you can still say you’re my friend? That you can trust me? Don’t even try that shit, Kyoko. You have no idea how I’m feeling right now.”

Kyoko put down her brush and took a quiet step towards her. One of her hands alighted gently on Kanae’s bright pink uniform, which was finely dusted with flakes of dry paste.

“I’m sorry Moko. I really am,” she said softly “I just... you know I care so much about you and I just don’t want to worry you unnecessarily.”

Kanae finally met her eyes, with a gasp somewhere between victory and exasperation.

“How could I not be worried, Kyoko? I know you have all of these... hang ups about love and romance and stuff and all of a sudden you’ve got bite marks it’s like...” she waved her hands in the air as if trying to find the right word “I don’t want you to rush into things just because you love... whoever it is. I don’t want you to go through a repeat of Sho, where you’re giving more than you’re getting.”

Kyoko tried to cut in, blushing furiously, but Kanae silenced her by beginning to speak even faster.

“I mean, can you honestly say you’re getting anything out of this? I know what you’re like, okay, you’re probably happy just because you’re being offered the chance for whatever it is that you’re doing involving this freaky teeth thing, you’re probably content with just the offer, but you don’t need to be. You’re allowed to take things slow, for Christ’s sake! You’re allowed to say no, if you want! You deserve the relationship that you want, especially after that bastard Sho, so just... just promise me you’re doing things at your own pace, you know?”

She took a step closer and put a supportive hand on her friend’s shoulder. Kyoko, suddenly overwhelmed by her Kanae’s kindness, the way she saw right through to her insecurities, and her own selfishness at not having been open, found her eyes swimming with tears.

“Mokoooooooooo”

She wailed softly as she wrapped a gentle hug around her, mumbling apologies and sniffling into the glue-stained pink of her uniform. They stayed there a while, pulling each other close and swaying a little, and for once didn’t mind the heat of an extra body on a summer’s day. That is, of course, until the automatic entrance doors notified them that some other office worker was coming, and Kanae pulled away like a loaded spring.

Blushing slightly, po-face still very much there but now much more obligatory than menacing, she unfurled a poster and got back to work.

“Oh yeah,” she said, cool as a newly-minted coin “weren’t you going to tell me that story about your disastrous dinner the other night?”

From atop the stepladder, Kyoko beamed with excitement and began to talk.

***

At the comfortably late hour of just-past-lunch, Ren and Yashiro pulled into the LME car park and stepped out into the stifling air. A short walk brought them to the air-conditioned basement floor of the building, and they began to climb the stairs.

All of the doors in the building had been left open for better air circulation in the heat, and so faint voices echoed from around every corner along with the cool breeze. As they approached the main lobby a pair of familiar voices drifted into focus, and their steps slowed with the expectation of an encounter.

“No, it was really bad”

Kyoko’s voice, wincing slightly.

“Really though?”

Kanae’s, emotion untraceable as usual.

“Yeah, because at that point I’m seriously shivering like crazy, my gag reflex is going off non-stop, and I’m really doubting whether I can continue.”

Ren turned to Yashiro with a frown as Kanae’s reply came echoing around.

“Girl, why didn’t you just tell him you couldn’t go on?”  
“I didn’t want to disappoint him! Think of how awkward it would have been to stop half-way!”

Kanae began to laugh so hard that it sounded like she was losing her mind.

“It’s not that deep, Kyoko! Just tell the waiter you don’t like mustard!”

The penny dropped. Yashiro tutted knowingly at Ren, pushing his glasses up with a smirk.

“Goodness,” he said as they rounded the corner onto the open lobby “whatever will I do with you?”

Ren shot him a glare.

***

When Ren ran into Kyoko that day, it was as casual and familiar as though they were in the habit of doing so every day. This, of course, did not go unnoticed by Yashiro, nor in her own right by Kanae, who was squinting suspiciously at Ren’s teeth.

They chatted idly about work (Ren was going to be away filming in Germany for the next month) and the weather (still hot) and so much purely platonic tedium that Kanae and Yashiro, finding themselves quite bored, excused themselves on the pretense of having some other job to do.

By the time that they finished, Kyoko realised that she was expected at the other end of town in full chicken costume in only half an hour, and so goodbyes were hastily said, along with the promise of some sort of electronic communication whilst he was gone.

Ren remembered this promise as he switched his phone onto airplane mode early the next morning. The thought of what he should write to her lingered on his mind as he absent-mindedly watched a stewardess point out the emergency exits, before he drifted calmly off to sleep.

His sleep, unfortunately, was nowhere near calm. In his dreams, he found himself under the harsh overhead light of a hospital corridor, nauseous with the smell of disinfectant and rubber and bitter medicine. Everything was so bright, so blindingly, unbearably white, that his straining eyes found only pain when they shifted around the room.  
He could feel it in there, with him; its presence growing stronger with each impersonal beep of a distant heart rate monitor. The metal and glass under his skin was cool. His breath formed clouds in the icy air.

A slow, shallow breath, surrounded him; disembodied, not his own.

The slow padding of black paws, and that self-sure gait of one who knows they will encounter no resistance. The black cat perched on the waiting room chair, eyes glowing, seeing all. Its fur ruffled as its tail flicked, a single black arc on a palette of pure snow.

‘HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DEAL?’

The beeping at the back of his mind flared like a snapping rope. Beep, beep…

The seatbelt sign beeped on and Ren awoke with a start. Next to him, Yashiro barely looked up as the flight crew announced that they would shortly be landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's short, but that's because it's the set up for a much longer chapter in a different format.


	5. Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so writing the end of this chapter made me rather uncomfortable, and it might make you rather uncomfortable to read. That's a warning, I suppose.

**Fate**

 

From: Mogami Kyoko 02:23  
Subject: Congratulations

Dear Tsuruga San,  
I’m aware that it’s been four days since I promised to “stay in touch”, and I am truly sorry that I did not get around to writing to you. I wanted to write to you to send my congratulations on the release of your latest film’s trailer.

It looked wonderfully dramatic, though I am slightly disappointed that you play the villain. Nonetheless, I am looking forward to watching it in cinemas when it comes out. Perhaps you’ll find it silly, but I was constantly looking out for scenes that I could be in! It’s exciting to have worked with you on a project, especially since it’s been such a long time since Dark Moon.

I hope that your filming is progressing smoothly, and I am looking forward to your reply.

Kyoko Mogami

P.s. I re-watched the trailer, and we are in a scene together! It’s the harvest scene, and I’m just about visible in the far background.

__________

Ren was halfway through re-reading his first personal email from Kyoko for the fourth time when he noticed that it wasn’t the only new message in his inbox. Pushing aside the multitude of emotions that were currently washing through him, amongst which were pure, unadulterated excitement and also a deep longing for a less formal writing style, he found the mail icon and clicked.

 

From: LME ID 341002 23:12  
Subject: I Know What’s Up

Listen here pretty boy, because I’m only going to say this once: I’ve figured this whole situation out.

I can tell that there’s a high chance of this ending in tears, more for her than for you, and I’d like you to know that if I find out you’re messing around then I will personally gut you with a rusty fish knife.

Consider yourself warned.

__________

The sense of pure anger radiating from the last line of text was upsetting his stomach. Or maybe it was the anxiety of knowing that someone knew.

Of course someone knew. Kyoko knew. But Kyoko… somehow, she was allowed to. By dint of some logical loophole, her knowing was more comforting than terrifying. It came with the feeling that she was there for him, that she would support him when he needed it.

Still, Ren shifted in his seat, and leaned over so that he could talk clearly to Yashiro over the noise of the motorway.

“How familiar are you with the intra-company mailing system?”

Yashiro didn’t reply, but after having overtaken a campervan which was slowing them down his brow relaxed and he tuned back in to his surroundings.

“Sorry, come again?”  
“I was just asking whether you know how to identify a user on the LME email system.”  
“Depends. What’s the ID?”

Ren scrolled back to the message and read out the sequence of numbers attached to it.

“Oh,” Yashiro replied, entirely casual about the whole affair, “I think that’s Kanae.”

Of course, Kanae. Ren recalled her threatening glare and felt his gut begin to twist. He had a bad feeling about this.

***

From: Mogami Kyoko 02:23  
Subject: Congratulations  
REPLY 18:53

Dear Mogami-san,  
Thank you for reaching out to me. I’ve also taken a look at the new trailer, and I’m happy to say that I’m very pleased with the outcome. I’m glad that you didn’t begrudge the work as an extra, especially as I asked you for help only at the last minute. Hopefully, we will work together on some other projects in the future, and I’ll try to be more organized next time.

The filming in Germany is progressing perfectly on schedule, and I’m told that this is to be expected. The historic towns that we’re filming in are mostly very traditional and conservative, and there are some interesting parallels with Japanese culture, such as a focus on cleanliness and punctuality. However, I still can’t get used to the food. It’s all rather heavy, and, as you know, I don’t really have enough appetite of an afternoon to eat curried sausage. I never thought that I’d miss the little things, but convenience store onigiri has appeared in my daydreams a lot recently.

__________

Ren stared at the phone, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. Something was missing.

It was clear that something had been lost as the words made the journey from his mind to the page. Something fundamental, unspoken. What was he holding back? What was he missing?

He was missing Kyoko, of course. His subconscious was screaming at him to pour out soulful poetry, to slowly fill the screen with an ocean current and to hope that she would feel its tug. In the wavering blue light of the hotel bar, the cool of the air conditioning and the muffled clinking of distant glasses were like echoes from the deep.

Returning to the surface, breathing deep, he tacked a short question onto the end and hit send.

“How are you?”

***

  
From: Mogami Kyoko 02:23  
Subject: Congratulations  
REPLY 18:53  
REPLY 13:02

Dear Tsuruga-san,  
I’m glad that your filming is going smoothly.

In the week since you left, I’ve been busy completing smaller errands for the LME, as the end of summer is approaching and the publicity department wants to release a new recruitment campaign. However, there is an upside to everything, and on my runs around town I’ve noticed that there is a German-style restaurant near Shibuya station. I tried the curried sausage, but it didn’t agree with me…

All in all, I’ve been alright (thank you for asking!) except for a bit of sunburn from when I was adjusting an exterior billboard. I suppose you’re going to scold me for not putting on suncream, and tell me that “an actor’s body is their most precious asset”. I’ve realised that now- the after-sun cream really stings!

Kyoko Mogami

p.s. I found your favourite onigiri whilst grocery shopping! I’ve attached a picture.

Attachment: Onigiriselfie.jpg

***

“Bleeding heck, Kyoko, don’t you know how to put on notifications?”

Kanae’s voice across the lunch table distracted her from the small screen of her pink plastic folding phone.

“Uhm, what do you mean?”  
“I mean,” huffed Kanae “that I know you’re terribly anxious to hear from your man in Munich, but that I’d appreciate it if you could look at me rather than your phone all the time.”  
“Gosh, I’m sorry, I just-”  
“Yeah, I know, you want to see if he’s replied or whatever. For pete’s sake, couldn’t you at lea-”

She was interrupted by her own phone on the table, buzzing loudly. There was a second of tense silence. Kanae’s eyes flicked from Kyoko, to her phone, to Kyoko and then back again. Kyoko narrowed her eyes, almost mockingly. Then, in a split second, both pairs of hands dropped their cutlery with a jarring metallic clang, and went darting forwards to the outdated smartphone.

Kanae, her limbs those few winning inches longer and more graceful, felt her fingers close around the cool glass first, and immediately yanked it into the air with a victorious shriek. Kyoko made a few lazy swipes at it, but after it was clear that her friend’s height was always going to block her, resigned to sitting back on her bench and laughing.

“Go on then,” she said, smiling childishly “Who is it?”

Kanae unlocked it with her finger and swiped a few times, squinting at the small text on the screen.

“Oh, it’s the Drama Alert Website”  
“Wait, you follow-”

She was hushed by the agitated waving of a usually graceful arm, and a low mumbling that approached the speed of sound and was quite incomprehensible.

“…noofficialexplanationasofyet” she finished.

She remained frowning tensely at the screen for a few seconds, and then Kyoko hesitantly reached out a hand to tap her softly in the shoulder.

“What’s happened?”

Kanae’s expression softened, and she handed her smaller friend the phone in order for her to read the article herself.

“I think you’ll want to read this yourself.”

‘Japan’s No.1 Bachelor Collapses Two Weeks Into Filming Abroad’

Kanae was right. She did.

***

One week into his German schedule, Ren’s anaemia returned. He had been avoiding the meat, so he supposed that it was to be expected, and resumed his daily use of the local Eisenpräparate.

Halfway through his second week, he developed a feeling of constant light-headedness, and became so pale that the makeup team scolded him for ruining the film’s continuity. His charming, fool-proof smile faded as his lips became chapped, and the full body of his acting was washed out by a ghostly hoarseness.

By Friday, he was practically stumbling through the paces of life. His eyes developed a jaded tinge and his look was always slightly far off.

On Saturday, he threw up his lunch. On Sunday, he met the devil.

He was in the Munich Church when he noticed it. Or perhaps it was the cathedral? He had not been paying attention to the tour guide, and in any case he did not speak German. A round metal plaque was sunk into the stone floor, the vague outlines of a pair of footprints moulded in.

He strolled to the small explanation panel mounted on a nearby wall, ignoring the lurching of his stomach as he went. His brow was slick with sweat as he scanned the English text.

The story was concise but clear, triumphant, proud. The architect of this enormous edifice had tricked the devil. He had gambled with his soul and beaten the odds.

‘Must be nice’ he thought, walking back to the footprint in the tile floor.

He put his foot tentatively into the indentation, and then looked up once more. Once the stars had cleared from his eyes, and the crackling of his sinuses had settled down, the sight of the space opened itself before him. He was alone here. He could hear his shallow breaths and see the way that they stirred the dust in the muggy space. He could feel the distant chatter of a summer breeze float by and taste the old incense in the air. Could this moment be only his?

A shrill squeak sounded from the vaulted ceiling.

Ren sighed. Of course it wasn’t.

“What do you want?”

The black bat twitched and flapped, its ebony eyes reflecting the light like a perfect sliver mirror and once more seeming to glow. The darkness around it was heavy and yet alive, as though it was slowly pulling him in, away from himself.

_‘FOOLISH MORTAL. SO SLOW NOW, SO WEAK.’_

Ren felt his heart begin to beat out of rhythm, and stumbled to a pillar to support himself.

_‘FRESH BLOOD, FRESH LIFE.’_

“They only eat blood sausage on special occasions over here.” He struggled with a dry smile, before coughing violently.

_‘SILENCE’_ commanded the voice inside his head _‘ONLY HERS’_

More than exhaustion, or the dull ache of his bones, it was irritation that stirred in Ren’s mind.

“Oh, what does it matter anyway? Why does it have to be her? Why do you get to decide who I eat or not? Of course you can’t tell me,” His mind was telling him that he was shouting, but his voice came out in a quivering croak “Of course you can’t just fucking tell me. When was the last time that you did anything useful for me? The hospital? No, of course, even at the hospital you couldn’t just do what I wanted; you had to be all mystery and contracts and hiding in the shadows and- and-” he found himself shaking “and fucking up my life. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

_‘BY THE END OF THIS YEAR WE SHALL HAVE YOUR SOUL’_

“But what does that mean?” Ren cried, voice hoarse, tears threatening “What is a soul? And why, why can’t you just leave me alone?”

He found no answer, only the sanitized echo of an empty hospital corridor and the perfect shattering of his conscious. Behind a pane of blue-tinged glass, the rippling outline of a body lying down shivered and danced, as though sinking in cold water. A woman in a red dress was shrieking, convulsing, and the scream of a name reverberated through Ren’s skull as he hit the ground.

‘Rick’

***

From: Mogami Kyoko 02:23  
Subject: Congratulations  
REPLY 18:53  
REPLY 13:02  
REPLY 09:13

Kyoko,

Don’t you think it’s strange? It’s been so long since I’ve tasted human blood, and when I’m drawn to it, it’s yours. When evil incarnate comes to find me, it’s with you.

What is this godless mess that I’ve trapped you in? Is this destiny? Is this fate?

Fate. That must be how we’ve ended up so entangled. I don’t know whether it’s my fault or not, but the only other possibilities are you, or evil itself, or America’s healthcare system.  
It’s funny now that I think about it. Actually, I’m not sure that I’m really thinking about this at all. The nurse just put me on meds that end in “-ine” and the last thing that I remember is having a one-sided conversation with a bat.

I want to believe that some sort of pre-determined record is tying us together, but that thought is also somehow scary. Perhaps I should stop thinking about this. I’d like to stop thinking at all, really.

__________

***

“Bet you believe in soulmates,” said Kanae, reaching for the popcorn bowl “and fate, and all that.”

Kyoko didn’t look away from the television screen, where a glass shoe was being slipped onto a dainty foot.

“Well,” she said “It’s romantic, isn’t it?”  
“How do you figure that?”

She shifted on the plush pillows that were laid out beneath them.

“It’s like a promise that I’ll eventually end up with the perfect guy, like everything I do will eventually lead me to him”  
“There’s more to life than boys, you know.”  
“I’m not saying that a soulmate is the most important thing! Just that it’d be nice if I had one.”

Kanae narrowed her eyes in thought.

“But who gets to decide who your soulmate is?”  
“Uhm, God? Fate?”  
“You’re telling me there’s some old man in the sky busy writing fanfiction about me right now?” she deadpanned.

Kyoko looked at her friend in horror and proceeded to whack her with a cat-shaped cushion.

“No!” she cried, shuddering at the thought, and then, after some consideration, continued: “Okay, maybe it’s better if I get to choose who my soulmate is.”

Kanae rubbed her head and smirked.

“Well excuse me, but don’t you have a pretty shitty record at that?”

That comment earned her another full-force hit with the plush kitten, plus a theatrically exasperated huff.

“Just sayin’! Like, I don’t particularly think it’s grand universal destiny that Sho was a dickhead.”  
“That’s… alright, that was actually a good point.”  
“It just seems kinda messed up to me that you can excuse people’s actions by saying that ‘God is trying to test you’ or whatever. People are just assholes.”

“AND,” she continued, poking a finger in Kyoko’s face and scrunching up her face overdramatically “You in particular have got to remember that. No excuses for mysterious teeth man, if he’s mean then dump him.”  
“Hey! Why do you have such a bad impression of Tsu-” she caught herself just in time “Of my mysterious teeth man? He’s really nice.”

On the TV before them, an animated princess leaned forwards to kiss prince charming as the carriage rolled away.

“Oh, we’ve run out of popcorn”

***

Delirium could explain a lot of things. It could neatly explain, for example, Ren’s initial biting attack, or his recent essay on fate. What Yashiro’s calm voice over the phone could not explain, however, was the utter emotional chaos that it had created.

Kyoko had read that email countless times, almost to the point of an obsession, trying desperately to decode some hidden meaning, to uncover the feelings that lay beneath.  
Strangely, it was not passion, or a deep swoon, that took hold of her upon reading it, but rather bottomless terror. The thought that haply her entire life was being tied down with a thin red thread was now daunting to her, and the image of her hopeless feelings as an anchor to a sinking ship was ever-present in her mind.  
Now, more than ever, romance felt like a risk that she couldn’t afford to take. The uncertainty that came with Ren’s… condition? Was that what she should call it? Was not her responsibility, and, frankly, she didn’t feel that she particularly had the ability to ease it.

What did she mean to him?

It was the question that the crow, the exchange of blood, and the email all demanded. Was there even the remotest chance that this existential enquiry marked her out as special? She wished, she prayed that there was; and yet it still seemed so unlikely.

Fate.

She sighed into her morning tea. She had absolutely no idea how to reply.

So for the next two weeks, she didn’t.

***

Ren’s eventual return to Japan was an event of high drama. At the airport, reporters had flocked to his gaunt form, a sea of flashing lights and shouted questions as he entered a cab and took off into the pale blue of a Tokyo morning. Upon entering the LME building, he was flooded with flowers and gifts and messages of support by almost every member of staff, no matter how insignificant their connection to him was. Almost.  
Because Kyoko wasn’t there. The one face that he had urgently wanted to see, in whom he could seek comfort, was notably absent. Somehow everything felt empty without her.

Kyoko, he found out later, was fetching replacement lightbulbs downtown, and was visibly spooked when he appeared, pale and sinister, outside the Love Me quarters.

“Tsuruga-san...” she began politely, unsure of where to settle her eyes “I... wasn’t, uh, aware that you had returned”

She looked him over, carefully taking in the way that the sockets of his eyes caved and his cheekbones, once one of his most attractive features, seemed to mark the hollowness of the skin that lay beneath. He was not well.

He stumbled over his words slightly as he replied, more cracks appearing in his usually controlled facade.

“I arrived this morning” he said. After a beat of silence that lasted just a little too long, continued “I’m sorry, I wanted to talk to you, to clear up my behaviour.”  
“Your behaviour?”

An office assistant scurried past them in the corridor, her eyes lingering on the pair.

“Oh, um, sorry, would you like to come in? I think maybe we should discuss this in private”

He walked unsteadily in and sat down on one of the changing benches. Kyoko did the same, but decided to put some distance between them by sitting in the corner where the bench met the wall. It was her favourite place to sit, just under the fan and the lights, with just enough space to curl her legs beneath her.

“So... ?”  
“Well, first of all, I’m sorry if my email made you uncomfortable. That wasn’t my aim at all.”

Kyoko peered at him curiously. A possibility had opened itself up, and though she knew it was rather exploitative of the situation, the temptation to ask was irresistible.

“What was your aim?”  
“Oh, I’m not entirely sure of that myself.”

He was fiddling with his hands, his thumbs tracing the bony outcrops of knuckles and nails.

“It’s almost as if… I’m not in control sometimes. If that makes sense. Sometimes all that I know is that I feel terrible or that I’m thirsty, and then I wake up an hour later with no idea of what I’ve done. And I know that most of the time I must be sleeping, but evidently sometimes there are exceptions and, well… I hate that. I hate it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She could see his hands trembling, and flicked anxious eyes to see his face, but found that it was overshadowed by the hook rack near his head.

“That’s alright Tsuruga-san, that sounds like something that’s hard to go through.”

Something in the atmosphere changed. The flickering neon lights above them briefly flashed, before extinguishing with a barely audible click. The fan hummed as it whirred to a halt, and suddenly the air between them was warm and unbearably close.

In the gloom Kyoko could just about make out the contours of Ren’s face, leaning close. Faint orange light pooled on his angular jaw and the corners of his mouth, and she remembered why she loved him. He was handsome still; that intangible, inexplicable charm of his was coursing under the skin, in the glimmer of his oaken eyes. She could feel the warmth of his breath tingle against her cheek and his hand, closely brushing the shoulder of her overalls as he gripped a bar fixed to the wall. She was backed into the corner.

“Tsu- Tsuruga-san?”

There was no answer. Her eyelashes fluttered under a hot, heavy exhalation.

“Tsuruga-san, I-” She stopped with a sharp gasp as one of his large hands took hold of her uniform’s zipper. It slid smoothly down, just like the mouth and the wet tongue that had somehow made their way to her cheek.

She squirmed beneath his touch, and gently snaked a small hand to his, which had settled itself on the ridge of her shoulder and was pushing away the strap of her bra.

“Please, I-” Her hand was caught with a slap and slammed against the wall. Her clavicle tilted at an awkward angle and her stomach churned at this new development.

A sense of urgency set in. Not the pleasant butterflies of excitement or the sizzling tension of desire, but rather pure panic. She kicked and pushed with her other limbs, only to find them tangled amongst his or pinned to the wall. She struggled and shifted against him, only for him to press closer to her, their bodies separated only by the clothing between them.  
She could feel his skin, so close, so tender for the first time. In other days she had dreamed of being held so near and yet now the electric impact of his touch filled her with nothing but fear. Before her, on her, was a man that she loved and yet could not recognize, a terrifying stranger with the face of a lover.

She found herself yelping as he set a searing, lengthy kiss on her jugular, mumbling incoherently, begging for him to stop. Her pleas faded halfway between a panted protestation as the pressure of his tongue stopped, immediately replaced by the distinct tug of teeth resting on the bruising skin.

“Please” she whimpered, the heat and sweat and magnetism between them rising. “Please, no, sto-”

A wet snap rippled through the air as her skin ripped against his canines, pain sparking and then flaring like a gasoline fire. For a moment all that she could feel was the absolute, blazing agony of her neck being opened up and the strange, uncomfortable trickle of her own blood down, onto her chest. She thrashed and quivered instinctively, her core bucking in reflexive reaction to the sensory flooding that shook her.

Minutes felt like hours as she bled into him, her voice barely disturbing the still, dark air around them. And then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. Ren slumped forwards andthe paradoxical freedom of hands now free but burdened by the weight of another being rushed into her.

She hastily, shakily pushed him off of her and stumbled out, into the piercing light of the corridor. A hand clamped over her throbbing, running neck as she ran, following only her feet and the subconscious pull that led them. Finally, she stepped through the door of Sawara’s office and locked eyes with Kanae; expectant, overwhelmed.

Kanae rushed over immediately, but Sawara barely moved as he shakily picked up the phone and hit speed-dial.

“Requesting immediate medical attention and potentially police intervention on level two. We have an incident on our hands”


	6. One For Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to put a warning here for death and abuse. Consider yourself warned.

**One For Sorrow**

 

“You should consider yourself lucky.”

Ren nursed his head as he sat up, carefully feeling the bruises that were scattered across his face. He squinted a little in the light before realising that he was on the sofa in the main office, being talked to by his boss.

“Firstly,” continued Lory, handing him a cup of freshly brewed coffee and walking back to his desk “that I didn’t let Kotonami-kun beat you half to death, and secondly that Kyoko’s chosen not to take this higher up the system.”

Ren’s pulse began to rise. He could feel it pumping through his palms, pressed tightly to the hot mug, and through his legs, unsteadily placed on the floor. His memory was incomplete, and a strange dread was setting in. Lory gave him a clean, piercing smile that sent warning sirens off in his head.  
He took a sip of the warm coffee and grimaced as an unfamiliar mix of tastes hit him. As well as the usual mellow bitterness, there was a strangely metallic tang on his lips.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to get you here? Christ, you have no idea of the scale of this issue, do you?”

Ren took another sip.

“Sir, I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”  
“Kuon,” he replied, frustration creeping into his tone “You should be fired. No, you should be in _jail_.”  
“What-”  
“You assaulted Mogami-kun.”

The coffee cup clattered from the tabletop.

***

The magpie on the table fluttered and chirped and titled its head. At the door, Kyoko stiffened.

Her head had been swirling with fear and anger and hurt and some strange… need, more than anything, to understand, when she walked in. Her throat and chest had been tightened like a coil, as if ready to spring, unhinge as soon as she lost control. Her neck had hurt; not the keen sting of a tearing scab but a dull ache that beat in time with her heart. It had all stopped when she saw him.

She had been expecting some sort of release. An immediate rush of cognizance, a burst of comprehension, that, like a firework on a summer’s night, would instantly illuminate all that had been hidden before, a beautiful flash of light and hope.  
There were no fireworks. No bang, no flare, only the timid tap of her shoes on the carpet and the rustle of Ren’s face slipping further behind his hands. God, he was so close. So many words were bubbling up already. A tide of emotion threatened to sweep her away as her heart constricted to an impossible tangled mess.

Ren looked up. She flinched, still standing.

“I’m sorry” he said, not particularly to her but rather to the stagnant air between them “I…” He paused “You’re probably scared of me now. That’s perfectly understandable”

Kyoko looked down at him. She knew that she was above him, that she had the power in this situation. Still, watching him curl into himself beneath her, she did not feel at all powerful, nor safe, nor forgiving. She felt broken. Tears pricked at her eyes as she tried to speak.

At first her attempts to unravel the heaving turmoil inside her were too much. Her words were garbled by gulps and sobs, and she could feel a warm stream of tears begin to fall.

It took several minutes for her to find her breath. She stood, hands over her face, and sobbed until she felt she could no more. Ren did not stir, said nothing. And it hurt. Because all that she wanted was a warm hand on her back and a few gentle words; his presence, nothing more. And yet she saw the way that he watched her, hesitating, almost afraid to touch her. She knew that this wasn’t his fault and she knew that she shouldn’t be this scared of him, and yet the space between them at that moment was unbearable. He was scared of her too.

Was it selfish, then, that all she wanted was to meet his gaze? It didn’t feel fair. Nothing felt fair. Not after her attacker, a stranger, a lover, a friend, felt the same as her.

She wiped away the saline residue that was forming under her eyes and sniffed loudly. She was demanding attention. She needed this. She had to take this moment.

“I am scared. I’m not sure what I’m scared of anymore, maybe I…” she trailed off, noticing that his brown eyes were meeting hers. She firmly held the connection. “I don’t want to lose what we had. It’s just… really hard to trust you right now, and I don’t know how we’re going to get that back.”

_‘TRUST’_ chirred the magpie on the table ‘ _HOW AMUSING’_

Synchronised, acting on emotion alone, they turned simultaneously to grab the bird by its feathered neck, and it melted into an opalescent black puddle in Ren’s hands. Seeing it reappear on the arm of the sofa, Kyoko felt powerless once more.

“How can you say that?” her voice was shaking “I- This wasn’t easy. This was scary and I’m still so unsure and-”

_‘WE GAMBLE. WE PLAY.’_

“I’m not a game” said Ren. It felt as if she hadn’t heard his voice in years. “And I’m not yours, at least not yet. This- whatever this was- wasn’t part of our deal. You can’t do this. It isn’t fair.”

_‘FAIR. PERFECTLY FAIR’_

“How-”

_‘BODY AND SOUL IN TACT, IN POSESSION. ONLY SEPARATED. WE ENJOY MORTAL BODIES.’_

Kyoko looked at Ren, uncomprehending, unravelling. Desperation was beginning to grip her. Her vision was starting to blur again. How could this be the conclusion? That there was nothing that they could do? That they were utterly without hope? How were they supposed to move on from this?

“But why?” cried Ren, standing, advancing on the bird “What can you possibly gain from tearing us apart? Haven’t you destroyed my life, destroyed me enough?”

_‘FOOLISH MORTAL. IT IS NOT YOUR LIFE.’_ The magpie trilled mockingly ‘ _IT IS YOUR HUMAN TRUST. WE ARE SUCCEEDING.’_

Six twitching, bubbling, black pools of darkness appeared in the air around them. Murky, slow, unaffected by the push of the air, the flow of liquid danced and pulsated. From the heavy pewter shine of the metal’s surface, the tips of white feathers hardened and emerged. Black beaks and clawed legs took shape, flapping with a strange fluid inertia.  
Seven magpies hovered and clicked. Their eyes retained that strange liquid, milky quality as their formation, so that it was impossible to tell what they saw.

_‘TRUST. SECRETS. SO STRANGE, SO HUMAN. AND YET ONE BEGETS THE OTHER.’_

Ren faced Kyoko and she felt her heart catch in her throat. His look was softer than she had ever seen, more vulnerable. He was still looking up to her, beneath her, as if begging. Flanked by birds, he reached out a hand and asked a question:

“How can I make you trust me again?”

She laced her fingers amongst his. She was vaguely aware of the avian effigies surrounding them beginning to glow a fierce gold, and of her world slipping away from under her feet.

***

  
There was a green copy of Faust on the seat behind him. The pages, already wearing and crinkled, were yellow from the cigarettes that he had taken up only a day after he had left behind old German books and school and all that it entailed.

Time had evaporated away then. Little bubbles; responsibility, education, meaning, rising away from the surface and into the aether, like the white smoke that poured from his lips. It had felt so free. Sunny lazy New York afternoons had crawled by in the haze of tobacco smoke and Tina’s bright red lips parted in perpetual laughter.

The carbon sting in his lungs and the smell that hung around him had said something. He was never sure quite what, but the denim and the leather and the worn-down sneakers had all pointed towards rebellion. Teenaged rebellion, so small-minded and yet so coveted, paling in the large shadow of Rick’s gracious heart. Rick’s rebellion had meant something. Nothing as easy as ‘fuck the police’ nor as unnecessarily broad as the universal truth of kindness, but rather something that was inherent to his character, always present in the comforting baritone of his voice.

So why, then, did this car seat feel oppressive? The pungent smell of ingrained smoke made him feel queasy. Rick’s strictly agnostic rosary, hanging from the rear-view mirror, glinted harshly, sending razor-like blades of light refracting off the surface of a scratched rolling stones CD in the footwell. Squinting in the blinding glare, the red flash of a lipstick stain caught his eye. It made him sick to his stomach.  
That same red, of coca-cola cans and subway line 1, had spilled across the across the asphalt as a stream from Rick’s head. He’d screamed, cried, drenched his hands in the warm blood as he frantically picked up the body. Rick’s blue eyes were slightly glazed.

And now he listened and he waited. He could see Tina clenching her fists around the steering wheel as the traffic became once more unstuck and picked at the flakes of dry blood on his palms. Had the ride along these familiar streets always been so long?

And suddenly the same time that had been entirely lost on him came rushing back with the regular beep of a heart rate monitor. Not quite the rigidly enforced minutes of school hours; these seconds balanced on the edge of an absolute unknown, uncertain and insecure. Every beep could have been the last.

The first time that he’d seen Rick, laying there, it had been a relief. His face bore a calm, peaceful look as he slept. There was no way of knowing then that he would stay sleeping for weeks on end.

There was a new tube every time he visited. He hated those things. Snaking, silvery plastic threads twisted away from an oxygen mask and created a tangled forest that slowly but surely began to hide him, encase him, so that Kuon felt him grow further and further away. Sometimes, he was sure that he had seen the dizzying flash of a smile behind that glassy barrier. He would turn away from the door, perhaps, despite himself, return that same hopeful expression. He would stumble back to the side of the bed and search, endlessly, for a sign. None came.

Outside, the world was changing. Summer was bleeding into autumn, slowly draining all the vibrant colour that had once permeated every aspect of his life. Tina had stopped wearing her characteristic lipstick and shed her vibrant summer dresses. That red, that glorious, burning red that Rick had said made her the most beautiful woman in the world, was almost too painful to bear. She existed now as a ghost-like remainder of the past, far too sensible, far too demure.

And yet the world had kept on spinning. A strange balance had formed around the hole that Rick left, on tiptoes and long silences and nights spent alone. And perhaps he’d been avoiding the truth before him, and perhaps he knew that this must all come to an end, but that didn’t make the total disintegration of hope any less jarring.

He wasn’t even meant to have heard it.

And yet how could he not?

A collapse was rarely silent. Tina’s started in shouts and ended in gulps and tears and a heavy fall onto the floor.

“ _WHY?”_ she screamed “Why did you have to leave me, leave me all alone? And leave me on a knife’s edge, and leave me with the child who will have killed you before the year’s end? It’s so hard without you here. I love you- you must know that I love you- but I can’t bring myself to love him… I can’t, Rick… I can’t go on like this- we, _we_ can’t go on like this. I can’t go on caring for a monster of a boy, a boy who’s killed you!” And then it all came tumbling down, word by word, sob by sob. “I don’t- oh God! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’m- I’m killing you too. I don’t have the money for this, Rick, I just don’t. Not with you gone. I can’t get you a hundred thousand dollars, even if we re-mortgage the apartment and- oh God, oh _God_ , I’m going to have to leave it, Rick. I don’t want to and I love you, but…”

Time stopped.

The constant beeping of the heart rate monitor simply stopped. Tina’s crying stopped. His heartbeat stopped. Everything, life around him, almost ceased to be.

And suddenly the world began to spin, to swirl. As if gravity had lost its power, the echoless room left him and he began to float, perfectly trapped between the shifting square walls. A strange, momentary blur crawled around his vision, and as the slightly too bright light of a surgery lamp hit him, he felt as though he was being watched.

The strange comfort of this distorted reality was all-encompassing. He realised, after having passed his hand through a thrumming river of glass, that he hadn’t been breathing for several minutes, and also that he didn’t particularly feel the need to start again.

How peaceful this strangeness was, he thought, and how much he should like to stay there.

He was pulled from the soft palette of white by the slinking of a black silhouette. For a moment, all that he saw was a single point of darkness, an entrancing black hole pulling him in. And then it blinked.

Two glowing amber eyes were marked by black slits. He felt that he might fall into them.

_‘POOR, FOOLISH MORTAL’_ mewled the cat, padding gracefully on the upside-down ceiling and jumping to a lonely seat. _‘YOU ARE LOST’_

The voice was strange, disembodied. It seemed to Kuon to know all. Perhaps he was lost, he decided, or perhaps he had lost something. Perhaps he had caused some other person to lose; to lose consciousness, to lose a lover. Loss had become the only constant in his life.

The cat flicked its tail and its whole form shivered like the ripples on a pond.

Everything liquefied. The walls tumbled and bubbled away, leaving him slowly sinking in dark water. Light played strangely across the surface; wherever that was. He was no longer sure of anything but the coolness of his skin.

Light came to him not in a beam but a perfect circle. A sphere, or perhaps a halo, appeared before him, so tantalisingly close. That light in the darkness, that ray of hope with amber eyes, was irresistible, intoxicating. He wanted nothing more than the dizzying calm that it brought.

_‘YOU SHOULD LIKE TO FIND YOURSELF’_

He did.

_‘YOU SHOULD LIKE TO SAVE A LIFE’_

Oh yes, that was why he was here…

_‘YOU SHOULD LIKE…’_ the voice, no, the chiming of a bell, paused _‘HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DEAL?’_

Oh, Kuon would like that very much. And even as his head buzzed and the distant print of a contact flitted through black space, he watched through half-closed eyes with a sense of contentment. The sensation of a slash across his palms was numb, pleasantly ticklish. The trickle of cold blood away, into nothingness… well, wasn’t it what he wanted?

***

Kuon woke up to the greasy smell of another burned omelette and laughter in the kitchen.

Laughter. How long had it been?

He shakily pushed himself up off of what turned out to be Rick’s worn-out couch, and stumbled into the doorway.

Tina was scolding Rick for wasting eggs. There was a ketchup stain on her blue summer dress, and she was holding back a smile with bright eyes. Rick apologised jokingly and began to open their fifth-floor window to let out the smoke when he noticed Kuon walk in.

“Hey, glad you’re feeling better!” he said chipperly, pouring cold water onto the hot pan and releasing a cloud of steam “You- you okay?”

Kuon wiped the tears that were forming in his eyes and sniffed. A watery grin formed on his face as he replied.

“Yeah, it’s just the smoke.”

 

And for a time things were normal. As normal as things could be when Kuon knew that none of this should be real, was the only one who remembered him in that hospital bed.  
He quit smoking, and finished reading that tattered copy of Faust that had been kicking around. He began to appreciate what he had and pay attention to the everyday, though it became increasingly hard to know what counted anymore.

Had Rick’s temper always been so quick? Had Tina always had those bruises? Had Kuon always felt so scared when Rick picked up a kitchen knife and lunged, only joking, but with a manic twinkle in his eye?

Kuon didn’t know how he hadn’t seen things escalating. His life had finally found a strange sort of equilibrium in which the days passed comfortably. He was growing out of old clothes, and into new interests in theatre and music. Everyone was moving seamlessly on, and he couldn’t afford to be left behind. He had to keep learning, helping, he had to find himself. Perhaps that was why he had never seen Rick purchase a shiny new revolver, or replace the locks. Perhaps that was why he had missed the signs that so glaringly called out to him now.

Still, nothing could prepare him for a dark bedroom and two bodies in warm puddles of blood, nor the black cat that sat over them and watched.

_‘HUMANS ARE SO FICKLE’_ it said.

And as Kuon frantically waited for the 911 operator, he had for the first time an urge that would pursue him forever. He looked at the sea of red at his feet and felt hunger.

***

  
Kyoko watched Ren collapse further into himself.

The words were burning a hole in her throat. She knew it was selfish and it was wrong and that these would be the words that she might regret the most; and yet being selfish had never felt so deserved. If she could not speak her mind now, when all was utterly lost, then what was the point of language at all?

“I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. It must’ve been really hard and I know that you’ve just made a really vulnerable admission but-” But. That, she supposed bitterly, must be the beginning of the end “what does that have to do with me? I don’t want to be involved in this crazy story anymore. I just want to feel safe, I just want to know why- why this is happening, why it had to be me.”

A black cat on the table between them playfully purred. Its flickering firelight eyes narrowed and the distinct impression of mirth was on its furry lips.

Ren gulped and sat up straight. He pulled the low hanging hair from his face and looked Kyoko in the eyes.

“Mogami-san, I… I think I might love you.”  
“That isn’t my fault!” she shot back immediately, unthinkingly.

And then disbelief and exasperation hit her like a brick. A sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob issued from her lips and she almost began to laugh at the ridiculousness of their situation.

“And I- oh my God, Tsuruga-san- I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In traditional verse, the number of magpies at a gathering means something: "one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. five for silver and six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told." A localised Lancashire version even goes up to "thirteen is the devil himself", but I thought that might be a bit much.
> 
> I tried not to spell out why the devil has this fixation on Kyoko too much, but if you still don't get it- comment, I guess?


	7. The Meaning

**The Meaning**

 

They stared dumbly at each other. They both understood perfectly what the words had meant, and yet to have heard them spoken aloud was progress that neither of them had expected to make.

The momentum of her racing pulse sent Kyoko crashing heavily down onto a sofa opposite Ren. She breathed a long sigh of relief and placed a hand over her heart.

“I never imagined I’d say that.”  
“Me neither.”

Her heartbeat was still hammering in her ears. Was this all that it took? A blush crept up her cheeks and she flicked her eyes to him, only to have them immediately met. He quickly looked away, placing a hand on the back of his neck and trying his best to pretend he hadn’t been looking.

It was too late. She had caught him. That fluttering, giddy high of his eyes on her bubbled in her stomach and fizzled up her spine, pushing out the meaningless words that had been balancing on her lips.

“Can I see your eyes?”

Oh god, where had that come from? There was so much that was within her grasp now, and so much that she wanted to know. Why had she started with something so superficial?

She felt slightly more than a beat’s pause slip past and watched nervously as he ran his hands through his hair again. She was beginning to realise that it must be a nervous habit.

“Um, yes, I suppose.” He began, slowly recomposing himself.

Ren took his hands back to his lap and turned to face her. She saw the light pool in his irises and glitter on the specs of caramel there inlaid.

She had heard a lot about the golden flakes in deep brown eyes, and the entrancing way that the light danced on them. She had never seen them in real life. Now she saw that mythical gold, and how falsely it glittered; how shallow they seemed in the pallor of the incandescent bulbs above. He did not have fool’s gold swimming in his eyes and he did not need it.

“No,” she said softly, “Without- I mean, your real eyes.”

He blushed and stumbled and managed to poke himself in the eyes more than once as he hastened to peel away the strange barrier between them. They were both so keen and so uncertain and so desperately in love that their fumbles and nervous laughter and battering hearts were almost as one.

And in the end two concave discs of glass were scattered across a coffee table and Kyoko sat keenly on Ren’s lap, staring into his eyes. They were as green and clear as the morning dew on a bamboo stem, and their mildness inspired in her a calm that she had missed for far, far too long.

She reached a hand slowly up to run it through his hair and he closed his eyes at the soothing motion. How long she had waited for this moment, and how simple it seemed now. Her fingers flowed smoothly through the black locks, the soft pads feeling the warmth of his scalp and the slight resistance of the styling gel he used. His lips curled into a faint smile as her nails grazed the skin behind his ear and she leaned closer, intrigued by her power over him. She had just begun to examine a patch where the faintest roots of blond were growing out when her warm breath on his ear made his eyes blink open.

Kyoko realised how close they were then. His breath was warm and faintly ticklish on her nose. His eyes were tilted up to hers, searching. His hands were wrapped loosely around her waist. There was an opportunity unfolding there, and they both knew it.

She held his gaze firmly and snaked her hands to his shoulders. They were connected.

He leaned into her but only halfway. He looked up at her one last time and then his chin lifted and his slanting eyes closed like a fan.

Kyoko thought that her heart was going to explode. After a few almost overwhelming heartbeats had passed, she came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t, and leaned down to kiss him.

Ren had known as soon as he had closed his eyes that he was taking a risk. The seconds afterwards, where nothing had happened and all that he saw was darkness, were the most nerve-wracking of his life.  
But then he felt the swish of her hair hanging low and her lips suddenly pressed against his. They were warm and firm and it was only slowly that they began to move with his. And it was wonderful, it was everything that he had ever wanted, but it felt wrong.

He pulled away and felt himself falter for a moment as he saw her confused face.

“This is wrong, Kyoko.”

There was silence. Her face hardened and she leaned away.

“I know.” She said “I know and it’s strange and my feelings are all so jumbled up right now because obviously, I love you. I love you so so much but I don’t love that you, and I can’t- It’s so hard to separate the two of you.”

Ren reached a hand up to stroke her cheek. It was so strange for her to be above him. All of this was so strange.

“I’m sor-”  
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t. I don’t want your pity, Kuon.”

Kuon. He’d forgotten how powerful a name could be.

“We’re going to work this out together. As equals.”

She was still on top of him. Her face looking down filled up his vision, hanging orange locks almost brushing his nose. The glaring lights above filtered through the curtain of apricot hair and almost glowed like a blazing halo. The light from beneath her was not a stark white, but a fiery red that burned with passion. The shadows on his face poured in glistening amber.  
Wasn’t that why he had fallen for her? Her eyes held all the citrus intensity of a mandarin orange, and that same sapid sting filled his mouth when she pulled close and kissed him again. His hands tightened around her and her fingers tangled in her hair, and they stayed intertwined for a very long time.

***

Kyoko’s trainers squeaked on the polished tile of the corridor as she made her way back to the supply closet.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with?” echoed Kanae’s voice from around the corner. The faint sound of a mop pushing to and fro could be heard. “Seriously, I can, it’s no big deal!”  
“It’s fine!” she yelled back, rounding on the closed storeroom door and fishing for the correct key.

With the right lanyard found and the doorknob turned, the door opened and she walked in, vaguely patting the wall behind her for the light switch. Not finding it, she turned, and in one sweeping motion the door slammed behind her.

Shit.

She fumbled in the dark, trying desperately to unlock it, her hands shaking a little in the absolute blackness. She reached to her belt to find the right keys, but the ring snapped with a crisp metallic crunch, and a handful of jingling points went scattering to the ground.

Oh no.

Something was there. She could feel it; something wasn’t right and she had to get out of there, quick. She fell quickly into a crouch and raked the smooth floor for the tiny pieces of metal. She needed to get out. She couldn’t stay there.

A low buzz rose in the stifling darkness as her movements became more and more frantic. The air itself was thick and alive, swarming, scraping across her skin. Something acrid scratched in her throat as she gulped dry breaths.

A flash of light before her caught her eye, and she lunged. Her hands closed around the thing, and she was horrified to find that it was not the secure heft of a metal key under her palm, but something alive. She recoiled only to find that the glowing spot was beginning to crawl across her skin, under her shirt.

She got up, thrashed and spun, and became aware pinpricks of light in the air around her. They hovered and zipped and hummed through the darkness, leaving no trail of light behind them. When the thing in her shirt finally scuttled out from her collar and onto her cheek, she stilled. The buzzing and flashing around her seemed to dim as she locked eyes on it. She could almost see her own terror reflecting in its mosaic of red eyes. It looked at her, utterly without depth, and then bristled its spiny mouth.  
She flinched. Its wings became a blur, leaving behind only the low murmur of moving air as it joined the pulsating throng of flies.

Kyoko stood in silence, watching them swarm. The bright lantern-lights of their million glistening eyes coalesced into a single form that shifted and swam in space, rippling with the flow of life pressed harshly against the surface, swelling with skin and bone and something not quite worldly.

Orange light filled the space. Beneath the smell of cloves and pepper and lilies, sickly-sweet, the stench of decay invaded her senses, and she coughed at the sting of smoke in her lungs.

“What do you want from me?” she half-spoke, half-whispered.

_‘WE HAVE WANT OF NOTHING’_

The soundless words tingled fuzzily through her synapses. Her whole body shivered as the message passed through.

She stared. The throbbing sphere of insects seemed to be creating patterns in their flow. A flame, a mouth, a cat with two heads. Shapes came and went with dimensions that shouldn't have been able to exist.

“That’s a lie” she said, quivering but standing firm.

_‘WE-’_

“That’s a lie” she repeated, surer of herself “If you wanted nothing, why would you be here? Why would you bring her? You’re here to scare me. Why?”

_‘YOU MAY CALL US DEATH OR PLAGUE OR MISERY. WHAT YOU CALL US MATTERS NOT. YOU ARE FICKLE. YOUR SOULS ARE EASILY CORRUPTED.’_

“Is that what you think you did to Kuon? Corrupted him?”

‘ _THERE IS A DARKNESS WITHIN ALL MORTALS. YOU HAVE SEEN IT.’_

She almost laughed.

“And you think that’s surprising to me? Me, who spent my entire childhood being ground down until I was nothing, nothing, shunned by a mother who hated me and utterly abandoned by the boy that I had done nothing but love? And I’m lucky. I’m lucky because I’m alive and I’m well and I have people who love me. Your ‘darkness’ isn’t new to starving children and murdered women. What is your aim in spreading it?”

‘ _NIGHT IS THE ONLY TRUTH. BEFORE LIFE, BEFORE SPACE, BEFORE TIME; NIGHT.’_

“Oh fuck off.” The seething glowing liquid of universal diatribes before her no longer seemed so powerful. “Anyone can spread misery. Terrorising idiot mortals like me doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t change anything. It isn’t clever when anyone in this heartless city could destroy my life just as easily as you.”

_‘I AM EVIL’_ said the thing before her _‘I AM ALL THAT YOU FEAR’_

It echoed hollowly in the dark.

“I fear you like I fear a missed train or a soggy slice of toast. Sadness isn’t inherently deep, and neither are the assholes who cause it. I know… I know that I am loved, and those people have taught me that what makes humans special is not their cruelty but their kindness. Stop pretending that you are all-powerful when you can do nothing to those who have made me who I am, those who haven’t crumbled under the absurd pressure of your predatory deals.”

The form began to flash and shudder. A sliding ridge of insect bodies rose as a nose, two hollows of eyes, a slash for lips; a face rose from blinding light and Kyoko felt her hairs stand on end.

It was her mother. She had the same high, straight nose that Kyoko had failed to inherit, those eyes without warmth, and that contemptuous smile that had punctuated her childhood. Her mother.

_‘ALWAYS SUCH A DISAPPOINTMENT’_

She felt her heart sink. And then stop. She caught herself. What was this? What did it want?

“You never loved me, did you?”

_‘NO’_

The air crackled with electricity. From the buzzing cloud, an outstretched arm formed, each twisted finger thrumming under the surface with a strange, frantic energy. Writhing, contorted as if in pain, almost claw-like; and yet so close, so alluring. It was warm and almost magnetic. She found herself longing to reach out, to take it, to touch.

_‘DO YOU WANT ME TO?’_

Suddenly she was six again. She was alone at the school gates, the last to go. Yes. She was sleeping in the guest bedroom; always the guest, never truly one of them. Yes. She was being scolded for a ninety-five, never enough, never perfect. Yes. She was standing behind the kitchen door, hearing them fight over the burden of her stay, trying to get rid of her. Yes.

She was sitting on the riverbank, splashing in the water with a blond boy, seeing fairies in the light that flinked off the spray. No.

Like a spring of glacier melt, ice cold, bubbling up, the words surged up from the deepest cavity of her chest and spewed from her lips:  
“NO! No, no I don’t need your love, I don’t want your deal. I want you to be gone, I want Kuon to be free!”

The words tumbled thick and fast, pouring without stop. The light, already blinding, grew brighter still. It flashed and filled the room as her cries grew in a crescendo, screeching like the dying embers of a forest aflame.

“Go!” she shouted. “You have no power here! Begone! Begone!”

The air began to pull and swirl. A vortex was forming, pulling gravity into itself. The din of screams and clanks and an inferno not far off were deafening.

And then they were gone. The light flickered out like a candle, and there was silence.

Kyoko looked at her hands and clapped them experimentally in the dark. She felt and heard the impact of the solid flesh colliding, and concluded, with a unsteady grin, that she was still alive.

***

Ren was stood at the reception desk, sorting out his schedule, when he felt it. Every cell in his body was vibrating, rearranging itself. A rush of tingles left his head feeling fuzzy, and his hand slipped on the paper. He smiled, laughed, keeled over, and then vomited on the floor.

***

  
When Kyoko finally opened the janitor’s closet door, a bottle of cleaning product in one hand and a bucket in the other, she was surprised to find Kanae, Sawara, two night-shift janitors and a fully-suited fireman waiting for her.

They gaped at her for a few seconds, and then she nervously ventured a question:  
“Uhm, what’s wrong?”

Kanae marched over, placed a hand firmly on her shoulder and looked her dead in the eye.

“Kyoko, the door was glowing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next few chapters are going to be much more easy read than this, don't worry.


	8. Be Mine

**Be Mine**

Kanae’s stare from across the examination room was excruciating. She could feel it prickling on the back of her worn-out pink uniform, slowly boring holes in the thinning fabric.

The doctor asked her for the third time if she had experienced any nausea, and when she replied in the negative, he removed the tongue depressor from her mouth and huffed. Leaning back with a vaguely pensive air and rubbing his chin, he ruminated for a few seconds over what say.

“Medically,” he began, “it’s a mystery. I just have absolutely no idea what to do with you.”

He put down his equipment and picked up a clipboard and pen, flicking through pages of photo-copied charts and swathes of other medical information that was absolutely lost on Kyoko.

“There’s simply nothing more I can do at this stage.” he continued “I suppose I’d better send you home. Just sign here and we can file this in your medical history.”

Curious and still not entirely up-to-date with what was going on, she took the pen and eagerly signed her name next to a paragraph of eye-witness testimonies. This completed, she stood up, stretched, politely thanked the doctor for his services and then opened the door to leave, immediately followed by Kanae.

Kanae’s raven hair fanned behind her as they walked smartly out of the ‘radiation and specialist burns’ unit of the Tokyo Metropolitan hospital. She followed silently as they passed the other departments through painted blue corridors and finally on to the reception, where Kyoko set about retrieving her coat.

“So…”  
“So?” replied Kyoko, still searching the cloakroom.  
“So, can we have a long, honest conversation about this? Please? I was willing to let you have your privacy after our last heart-to-heart, but this? This?” she waved her hands emphatically at the receptionist “The president thought there’d been an electrical failure! The firemen called in the radiation squad! Just what the fuck is going on anymore, Kyoko?”

Kyoko looked back to her and softened. She gently picked up her coat and took her friend’s hand as they walked through the sliding glass doors and into the chill afternoon.

“We should talk about this.” She said, a muted but recognisable glint returning to her eye. “It would definitely help me clear up my head, and I… I don’t want to worry you.”  
“Well,” replied Kanae sarcastically “You’re doing a great job at that so far.”  
“You know what I mean! Anyway, since we’ve been given the day off, do you think maybe it would be possible to-”  
“Ah, that café?” pre-empted Kanae “Yeah, the one in Shibuya, with the parfaits, I remember now. Sure, we can go.”

A wobbly grin formed on Kyoko’s lips.

It was not the first time that she had realised that Kanae was brave. Brave enough to face the bustling streets of Shibuya, calorie-packed ice cream, and the prospect of her friend’s idiotic designs on love never working out. It amazed Kyoko how quiet she was about it, too. Even now, as they waited for the bus, she made no mention of having stayed up the night before, trawling Instagram for that one trendy coffee place that Kyoko had mentioned in passing, or of her phone call earlier that day to book a table. Instead, she calmly adjusted her shirt, pulled out her travel card, and hailed a bus, the push of air ruffling her hair in a way that only barely revealed her excitement.

***

Vomiting had never felt so good.

Ren felt so incredibly alive in that moment just after throwing up the contents of his stomach all over the lobby tiles. Yes, his throat was tingling with acid sting and his cheeks were burning and his stomach was churning, but it felt like butterflies. His skin was fluttering, reforming, resettling; he felt his hairs stand on end as his body lost all tension and bent, floor-bound. He didn’t mind. The impact of hitting the floor would be nothing against this absolute bliss. He sank further, reality beginning to leave him. Through his dulled senses, the glint of clean porcelain seemed to rush at him as he plunged forward.

Just before his perfectly sculpted cheek could smash against the white tile, Yashiro caught him by the arm, his grip slipping a little on the sweaty sheen of the skin. He made a polite apology to the receptionist and picked up Ren, before hobbling over to an empty office, struggling and cursing under Ren’s dead weight.

Ren groaned slightly as he grappled with the door handle, setting a bolt of panic through Yashiro’s chest. He rushed into the room and let go, his shoulders releasing jerkily as Ren slid off onto a chair. His head was lolling slightly, and his eyelashes fluttered in a way that was just uncanny enough to set Yashiro’s heartbeat running off far too fast.

“Ren, speak to me, what’s going on?” he shook him lightly by the shoulders “What’s happening?”  
“I feel… I feel fine” Ren slurred.  
“You sure don’t look-”

He was interrupted by Ren retching violently. Yashiro, torn between offering more support or leaning away to avoid getting that morning’s breakfast on his new suit, started to reach for his phone.

Ren was now heaving, choking into his own curled-in chest. The scraping coughs that issued from his lips rattled emptily, a dissonant chorus to his twitching limbs. All of him that should have been smooth and taught had become weak and slack, hanging as if crushed by the force of gravity, whilst his softest features constricted and crumpled in pain. Beads of sweat formed on his pale brow and began to run down his high, sharp nose as his breaths slowed to a shallow rale.

“Ren, I think we should really- I’m just going to call-”

And then, in a split second, he sprang from his chair, unfurled like a bloom. His limbs regained their force and pulled into a straight, perfect posture as his eyes rolled back into place and a warm glow rushed under his cheeks. His lips drew tight again, his breathing was tuneful, his feet were firmly on the ground. He even had the nerve to comb a hand through his black hair with a rakish smile, stand in front of him, and ask Yashiro what was the matter.

“Yukihito, I said I’m fine.”

Yashiro responded by dropping his phone in abject terror.

“What the fu-”  
“I feel incredible! I don’t know the last time I felt like this, I have so much energy, look, look-” he rambled on, tapping his feet excitedly “I’ve got control again! This body, all, all of me, it’s mine! I can’t believe I ever- you know- that it was someone else’s. I…”

He paused, having noticed the look of panicked confusion on his manager’s face.

“What’s wrong?”  
“I’m debating whether that actually just happened or if I had the mother of all hallucinations.”  
“What?”  
“Just humour me for a second” he said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him out of the door.

They walked briskly back to the reception, where one of the newer recruits of the LoveMe section was unhappily employed with mopping up a puddle of off-coloured slush.

Fresh confusion crinkled Yashiro’s brow. He pushed up his glasses and strengthened his grip on his charge’s arm.

“Hospital. Now.”

A bewildered and helpless Ren was dragged through the rotating doors.

***

A bead of condensation rolled lazily down the cold glass of a parfait cup as Kyoko scooped a spoonful of strawberry cream neatly into her mouth. From the other side of the sundae, Kanae swiped a rabbit-shaped wafer and crunched it in one go.

“Yeah,” she said “but are you dating?”

Kyoko finished eating a strawberry and guiltily fiddled with her spoon.

“I’m, uh, not exactly sure?”

She waited for a sarcastic rebuke and was surprised when none came. She peeked nervously up and found Kanae staring hard at her, a soft crease around her eyes betraying something that vaguely resembled emotion.

“Is that… I mean, are you happy with that?”  
“We’re definitely going to talk about it more at some point but for now, I don’t know… it’s sort of just, a lot has happened-”  
“You can say that again!”  
“And I think maybe we should take it slow, figure things out when the whole…” she looked around them tensely and then whispered conspiratorially “vampire thing has been sorted, you know?”

Kanae interlaced her fingers behind her head and leaned back on the trendy, plush pink benches of the booth they were in. With a sigh and frown aimed at no one in particular, she said:

“Well, I guess that’s fine then”

Kyoko picked up her delicate, spindly parfait spoon and resumed her slow assault on the small mountain of ice cream between them. Picking a spot with hazelnuts and heart-shaped marshmallows, she took keen aim and relished in the gooey sweetness.

“To be honest,” she said, letting a few drops of chocolate sauce escape her spoon absent-mindedly, “I really didn’t expect you to believe me that easily.”

Kanae, stirred from her daydream, plucked the last strawberry from the mound of cream and took up her own spoon.

“I didn’t at first, to be honest. No offence, but I’ve never really believed in fairies and all that, and it is kind of far-out to think of vampires in this day and age. But at the same time-” she got the marshmallow that Kyoko had been vying for and smiled meanly in jest “I didn’t peg Tsuruga-san to be the type to gaslight you over something so completely bonkers, and what you said about the devil… it sort of just all added up.”  
“In what way?” replied her friend, through a mouthful of chocolate ice cream. It wasn’t a very elegant look.  
“I kept being followed by this black rat with glowing eyes. It was just after we’d submitted a complaint about that fucker Reino.”

The name made Kyoko look up from the diminishing tower of cream. Her eyes shifted a little as she put down her napkin.

“Have they still not replied?”

Comfort almost radiated through every pore in Kanae’s face as she let out an unrestrained, though small, smile

“They have, actually. I was going to tell you about it this morning but then that whole, uh, devil, thing happened. Anyway,” she said, picking up her phone and swiping to the right email “the actors’ guild have blacklisted him, and 14 of the nation’s top modelling agencies will ‘henceforth refuse to work with him.’ Nothing’s being released to the press unless you want to pursue legal action, though.”

Kyoko let a deep sigh carry away her fears as she leaned back with a contented sigh. So she had been right, then. There was something rotten, there was something that could be done.

It wasn’t always obvious. She had been wrong many times, too many times. Wrong about Sho and Reino and falling in love. Wrong about just letting herself feel, not being afraid to care. How beautiful, she thought as she watched Kanae finish her bitter coffee, was the hindsight that now possessed her. Everything seemed so simple when there were people who loved and cared for her, who could show her that the world could be as wonderful as it was dark.  
Involuntarily, tears swelled in her eyes. My god, it was so elementary; how had she not seen it before? There was a place for her in this world, lover or not. There was a place for her at the back of Taisho’s restaurant, eating sundaes in quiet café booths, under the glaring spotlight, standing by his side. Finally, it dawned on her, what she had not been able to see for years: she was loved, and that, alone, was enough.

Across the table, stinging coffee steam dancing under her chin, Kanae noticed her tears and dared to reach a hand across.

“I’m sorry, it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

Kyoko replied with a watery sniffle, and the grip of her hand strengthened. She sat and cried until her tears had quite run out, and Kanae’s coffee was cold, and the ice-cream between them had melted into a shimmering, swirling mirror of sugar, the cut glass cup refracting the afternoon sunlight into an iridescent veil in the air.

***

“Well that’s just stellar then, isn’t it?”  
“Yukihito…”

Ren tried weakly to protest before the doctor took his temperature for the third time and he was forced to settle on silence and a plaintive raise of the eyebrows.

“What is it with you recently? You know it’s alright for you to be suffering but you just have to let me know! I can’t read your mind, Ren, you have to tell me what’s wrong!”  
“Id’s nod thad easy!” began Ren, the glass thermometer rolling obstructively as he spoke, “I can’d always-”

Suddenly, he was cut off by the electronic ring of his phone’s default notification noise.

“This had better be good news” grumbled Yashiro, as Ren fished his pockets and then handed him the phone. He twiddled with the thermometer impatiently as Yashiro scanned the screen.

“Wait a second, you’ve only got your notifications set for one person, which means…”

He swiped to accept the call and held the phone to his ear with a beaming smile.

“Hello, Mogami-kun!”  
“Hello Ku- Uh, Yashiro-san?” her voice wavered through the static, obviously taken aback “Sorry, is Ren not available right now?”  
“Don’t worry, he will be in about twenty seconds. He’s just being checked-over by a doctor.”  
“A doctor? Is something wrong?”  
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be- Ah, actually, he’s just about finished now, so I’ll let him explain.”

Ren took back the phone with a glare and mellowed when her heard her voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Kyoko. How are you?”  
“I’m alright now, thanks. Actually, I’m more worried about you. What’s going on?”  
“I managed to vomit all over the lobby floor and they need to make sure I haven’t come down with something that could affect my schedule. Perhaps you’ll find it strange, but I really do feel fine, though.”  
“Oh,” she breathed a sigh of relief “That’s good. Do you think it has anything to do with the…”

She trailed off. He looked back at Yashiro talking to the doctor and then replied.

“Yes, I’m sure of it. Only, in a good way, if that’s possible. Listen, maybe we should talk about this more later?”  
“Well,” laughed Kyoko “that’s actually why I called. Would you like me to come see you? We can get dinner from there.”  
“I would like that very much.” said Ren “I’m at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital. How long will you be?”

***

He could already see the headlines on tomorrow’s tabloids. TSURUGA REN IN SECRET AFFAIR? NATION’S TOP ACTOR ESCAPES FROM HOSPITAL WITH MYSTERIOUS LOVER. Hm, no, perhaps something shorter, and vaguely mocking of the situation? A pun, as they seemed to like; HAS TSURUGA REN GOT THE LOVE BUG ? Yes, that sounded convincing.

What picture would they use? He tried to remember the exact moment that the flare-flashing bulbs of paparazzi cameras had gone off, but all that he could turn his mind to was the way that the light had shone on her copper hair. And her smile. And the firm grip she had held on his hand as they weaved through the sea of microphones and shouted questions and constant, dizzying camera clicks.

In any case, he thought, surely whatever picture they chose to use, she would be there, smiling, beautiful. They would see her in cheap, blurry print, and perhaps for almost a second see why he loved her as he did.

And he was beginning to think that it was a little bit too much.

“You like your omurice with ketchup, right?” she called from the kitchen of his apartment.

He snapped out of his reverie to reply that yes, the more ketchup was indeed the better, and resumed his setting of the table. Having neatly laid out his best plates and chopsticks, he turned around to find her on tip-toes on the counter, trying to get to a colander on the top shelf.

“Need some help?”

She huffed jokingly and pouted in a way that set his heart off at a flying pace.

“We-ell, I wouldn’t if you didn’t store your kitchenware in a way that was utterly non-sensical, Kuon Hizuri.”  
“You know I’m pretty much hopeless at cooking anyway…” He reached up and easily curled his fingers around the metal handles, his elbow brushing her outstretched hand gently as he did so.

What followed was practically karmic. As Kyoko’s feet slipped on the smooth marble, the sensation of falling onto the tiled floor was almost nostalgic. How many times, she thought in the stopped time before she tipped, would she fall and he catch her, before the universe started to punish useless lovebirds like them?

In the split second of the fall, her vision fell only to him, the blur and the flash of his hair, the smell of shirt as her face crashed into it.

Ow.

After the shock of the initial impact had passed, they both winced in pain. As Ren watched the stars clear from her apricot eyes under him, the hand that was not curled protectively around her waist ventured to stroke her cheek. A wicked smile crept onto her lips as she tugged on a strand of hanging black hair.

“What next? Are you going to ask me how much I know about kissing?”

Her arm snaked around his neck, he pulled her close until her breath was on his lips.

“I don’t think I need to.”

Their kiss was slow and deliberate. There was no rush, only the strangling desire for more. His lips were a little rough against hers, tingling. Butterflies rushed and fluttered in her stomach, colour rising on her cheeks as his touch travelled down, to her neck, her collar, her-

“Wait” she pushed back, breathless.

He gingerly peeled his hands away. One ran nervously through his hair.

“I’m sorry, did I-”  
“No, nothing like that! It’s…”

She curled up, turning her gaze away from him.

“I know you’re Japan’s no.1 eligible bachelor and you’re the king of the night and you’re used to this sort of thing, but I’m just not. And I feel like I have no experience compared to you and I don’t even… I mean, what are we? What is…” she motioned between the two of them “this?”

Ren’s eyebrows pinched anxiously.

“I honestly don’t know either, Kyoko. I was waiting for you to tell me.”  
“Me?”  
“I don’t want to assume anything or rush you because you’ve always been a bit wary of love, and I wanted to go at your pace, even if that meant waiting a while.”  
“Ah.”  
“Ah?”

Kyoko stiffly peeled the embarrassed fingers away from her burning cheeks and blinked very knowingly.

“Will you ask?”

Ren propped himself contentedly on an elbow and sighed with a little smile.

“Kyoko Mogami, will you be my girlfriend?”  
“Absolutely.” She replied, already tugging on his shirt again.

***

Close. So, so close.

But not quite.

HAS TSURUGA REN CAUGHT THE LOVE BUG?

It was frustrating, really. They joked about over a late breakfast the next day, but at the back of his mind, that one word change was really bugging him.

“I would say that I have more of a right to be annoyed than you do” poked Kyoko “The Daily Report hasn’t even had the decency to name me, but the Morning Tribunal is already accusing me of secret pregnancy!”  
“Wow, your first big scandal. You must be thrilled.”

Kyoko narrowed her eyes at him mock-menacingly as she went to get the milk from the fridge.

“I know you’re joking, but at the same time it is quite exciting. I’d like to be recognised properly by the public at large, sometime.”  
“You’re already pretty well-known for your TV work, I would say,” replied Ren cautiously as he sipped his coal-dark coffee. “would you prefer to go into film?”  
“It’s not that,” she said, “but I seem to have been relegated to character-acting. It’s good work, of course, but I’d like to be known as Kyoko Mogami one day, rather than that girl from Box R”

Ren put down his mug and placed his head on his hand, thinking. Kyoko could smell the rounded bitterness of his drink rising in the heat, and wrinkled her nose a little at it. He let out a little laugh when he saw it.

“Well, to be honest, you might not particularly like this plan, but I’d at least like to let you know that the possibility is open.” He began. “I’ve been thinking; why not just tell the public?”  
“About us?”  
“In one way or another, yes.”

She pondered it as she stirred the milk into her tea. Neat, mechanical and rhythmic, the circles of her spoon created ripples as deliberate as her thought process. Ren, ever attentive to her actions, quietly took another sip.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t like that plan?”

He had a hard time putting the words together in the right order. Granted, he hadn’t woken up this early in a long time.

“You’ve always been so driven and self-motivated, and I didn’t want to offend you by suggesting you use someone else’s influence. You always seemed like you wanted to work your own way to the top.”  
“I do! Of course I do, but that’s not the problem here.”  
“Sorry; I’m not entirely sure I’m following here…”  
“I don’t care what the tabloids write about me, Kuon. I really don’t. I just want them to recognise me, to write our names next to each other the next time they cook up an unjustified sensation.”

A playful, childish gleam twinkled in Ren’s eyes.

“Perfect. Fancy being my plus-one at the premiere of the film that started this whole mess?”

***

Much to Kyoko’s surprise, there was no fussing from either Kanae or Yashiro when she greeted Ren by his first name at work the next day. As they talked through the details of transport to the premiere, she caught from the corner of her eye a Cheshire-like smirk of satisfaction slipping over Kanae’s lips, and a much-begrudging Yashiro handing over a thousand-yen note.

Still, as soon as they had set off in the direction of work for the day, Kanae turned to her with that inquisitive, well-meaning air that made Kyoko’s insides twist into tight, guilty knots.

“Annnnnnd?”

She could feel herself blushing a firestorm as she picked up a box of deliveries.

“We’re officially going out, and stuff”  
“Oh my god” burst Kanae, almost dropping her own cardboard box “Kyoko Mogami, after all these years of denying! Could you be any more lovey-dovey right now? Honestly, it would be cute if it wasn’t so gross.”

Kyoko scrunched her nose in defence.

“For the record, I’m not the one getting distracted in work hours.”  
“Hey, I’ve only got two hours with you before you run off to play a talking chicken, and I need to maximise my chances to take the mick before you go.”  
She responded by throwing an empty bottle of spray-cleaner at her friend and jogging off mischievously. It landed on its target with a harmless plastic ‘bonk’, and was shoved into a storage box as its holder set off at full speed. There followed for the next hour a chase through various sections of the LME, where boxes of supplies were gratefully but rather confusedly received by the staff who had requested them. They looked at the two girls, panting furiously, and reminded themselves that the antics of the LoveMe section were likely beyond the mortal ken of normal folk such as themselves.

***

“Well, for a start, pink and red are totally out of the question.”

Hikaru Ishibashi, who had tagged along for unknown but ultimately well-meaning reasons, sat in the corner and signalled his agreement with a vigorous nod.

“But why?” griped Kyoko. “And can’t I just wear the same dress that I always wear to events?”  
“The black slip dress?” rebuffed Kanae “Absolutely not. Tomorrow is your night, Kyoko. You can afford to live it up a little; just not in red or pink. It clashes with your hair.”

Kyoko pouted as she leafed disinterestedly through the racks of dresses. Frankly, she didn’t want to think too much about tomorrow. Her chest tightened at just the thought of it.

“Ah, Mogami-san, if I may…” piped up Hikaru from his seat “I think what Kotonami-san means is that this is your, uh, Cinderella moment. Your grand statement to the public, as it were.” He flustered a little, waving his hands. “Only if you want it to be, of course.”

Something clicked in Kyoko. She whipped around.

“So I can dress like a princess?”

Hikaru and Kanae looked at each other, and then back at the expanses of clothing around them.

“Within reason…”

***

Kanae stood back and placed her hands on her hips. She narrowed her eyes into the squint of a hardened sailor. Sighing deeply and pulling a hand through her hair, she tugged irritably at the little black knots that she found at the end.

“You know what,” she said, rubbing her chin in thought “Yeah, I reckon this is the one.”  
“I like them both, to be honest” Re-joined Hikaru.  
“It’s the turquoise” interrupted Kanae “It complements your outrageous hair.”

Kyoko stopped fiddling with her necklace to look up.

“Hey!”  
“I never said it was a bad thing.”

Checking in the mirror for the last time and stepping delicately out of the changing room, Kyoko slipped on her heels.

“So, should we get this then?”

She shuffled nervously, but resisted pulling on her hair. She wanted to look good. She always did. She wanted to be pretty in their eyes. But there was also something else there, blossoming. Feelings that she had denied for years on years had started to thaw as she looked at herself; something like self-confidence, something like liking the way she looked.

“Can I get a picture first?” Kanae smiled without mocking this time. There was pride in the way that she asked without hesitation. “Paparazzi shots always look like shit.”

She got out her phone and Kyoko obligingly twirled. The dark, vaguely velveteen sheen of the material set off a cloud of twinkle as the long, loose hem of the dress spun, clinging just enough to her body to define but not overemphasise her shape. A simple topaz necklace flared and glistened in the changing light, but remained secure on the trapezoid piece of fabric that rose to the middle of her neck. Her arms and the edges of her collarbones stuck symmetrically bare, unobtrusive in her perfect posture.

Kanae clicked. On screen, a figure froze mid-spin, laughing, beautiful.

“Yep,” she said “Definitely a princess.”

***

“Maybe the princess of Monaco?”

Ren’s perspective remained more objective.  
Kyoko swatted him playfully but backpedalled immediately when she knocked his bowtie. He rearranged it, chuckling, and added:

“Really though, you look perfect.”

The blush that dusted her cheeks was hidden in the rushing squares of city light that glittered in the night. The harsh red of stop lights, the dazzling blue of neon signboards, the cozy yellow of a late-night cafés all seamlessly streamed by in the night as their taxi curved through the packed streets of Tokyo.

“I think we must be getting close”

The sleek, curved façade of Roppongi Toho Cinema glided into view. A sea of reporters were already crammed either side of the walkway into the venue. Kyoko watched, utterly enthralled, as black-clad security guards guided the car in, and cameras swivelled to point their way.

“Are you ready?”

His fingers intertwined tightly with hers. She pecked him lightly on the cheek.

“Let’s go.”

A valet opened the door and they stepped out, walking gracefully arm-in-arm down the red carpet. Despite the flashing of cameras and the questions cried into the air around them, their eyes remained locked firmly on each other, and then on the theatre in front of them.  
For the first time in her life, Kyoko understood how Cinderella must have felt, walking into the ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clue: there will be someone at the premiere that this story hasn't touched upon yet. Someone rather central to Kyoko's personal development, and who usually spells bad news. 
> 
> Sorry for the late update!


	9. Apologise

**Apologise**

A rather glaring oversight, Kyoko discovered, was that she had somewhat over-estimated how much anyone would care.

As they mingled with the other actors, drank champagne, and made polite small talk, hardly any mention of Ren and Kyoko’s being together was made at all. The youngest, and most principle actors joked lightly about the unlikely duo, co-stars their age gave congratulations, and the eldest, the veterans, flittered watery eyes over the pair to pass silent judgement in the gleam of an eye or a knowing smile.  
These seasoned icons of the big screen, their crumpled faces marked by the canyons and crevasses of old age, had seen enough scandal in their own heyday to be quite sick of it by now. They could not begrudge the young their blindness, their folly and their passion, for they too had been young once, and known the thrill of being talked about and cared about and beautiful in somebody else’s eyes.

Kyoko was utterly enthralled by the entire affair. The cool grace of the old hands as they introduced a prominent director or ordered cocktails at the bar, the twinkle of jewellery on every lady’s ears, necks, wrists, the pearly white smiles that flashed from quiet laughter… all of it was magical. By the time that they were ushered into the theatre to actually watch the movie, she had decided that she needn’t have seen it at all to have already have had a fantastic night.  
When she came out of the hall, weeping profusely, an hour and a half later, she had drastically overturned her previous mindset. The film, simply put, was exceptional. She could not remember the last time that she had cried as cathartically as she did before this movie. It was not a happy film, and it did not have a happy ending, but somehow the overall effect of it was not soul-crushing but tragically nostalgic. Ren’s character, a brilliant, mephistophelian antagonist, was frighteningly believable. She looked on, struck dumb, at the final image of his face, half-darkened and half-red in the flickering light of a field of wheat aflame. As the blaze rose into the night sky and the protagonist wept at what was lost, she realised that there were tears streaming down her own cheeks that she could not possibly stem, and even as the mournful music of the credits began to roll, she could barely speak.  
Light poured to fill the hall once the last of the film had tailed off, and Kyoko realised that she and Ren were the only people left in their seats.

“What did you think?” he asked. He handed her a handkerchief with which she wiped her eyes, and a hand running through his hair let slip that he was more nervous about the answer than he seemed.  
“It was amazing” she said “you were amazing. And really, quite scary.”

As they began to make their way out, Kyoko found herself gushing almost non-stop. The music, the cinematography, the acting… she had so many questions to ask him about the filming now. She couldn’t be entirely sure, but the soft smile on Ren’s face suggested that he was perfectly content to spend the next eternity answering them all, and this delighted her to no end. He accepted her praise without the gentleman’s smile and false modesty that he had displayed to the press and the crew, letting his pride slip to her and her only as he reminded her that she had been a part of it too.

As they reached the doorway to the entrance hall where the rest of the stars had gathered, Ren placed a hand lightly on her shoulder as if to hold her back for a second. She looked up at him, inquisitive.

“Before we go and talk to the others, you might want to-” he gestured vaguely to his eyes “Your uh, what’s it called? Mascara? Your makeup’s running from the crying. You might want to fix it.”  
“Ah! Why didn’t you tell me?”

She feigned annoyance for a moment, but her pout melted away when she saw that he seemed worried about it.

“Sorry!” she reached up to peck him lightly on the cheek “I was just playing around. Thanks for letting me know”

She scurried off to find a mirror and Ren, finding himself idle, went to talk to one of his co-stars.

***

Even the toilets in a place like this were classy.

She knew at this point that she should have expected it, but when she was actually faced with ornate gilt mirrors and veined grey marble sinks, she was still almost overwhelmed by the sheer grandeur that exuded from the very walls of the place. Still, a bathroom was a bathroom, and she did think herself silly, watching her reflection as she used a damp hand towel to wipe away the black smudges under her eyes.

Having satisfactorily cleaned herself up, Kyoko stood in front of the mirror and beamed. She was, after all, feeling pretty pleased with herself. She picked at one of the jewels on her necklace, marvelling at its coldness to the touch.

And in the half-second that the gemstone’s twinkle caught her eye, darkness fell with a subdued click.

Immediately, she felt her stomach begin to twist like eels in a basket. Looming terror battled with rapidly diminishing confidence in her mind. She had fought it off once before. She had beaten it. She could do this.  
Although… last time she hadn’t been in quite so lofty heels, or in unknown territory. She was at an unfair disadvantage here. Before she could fight anything, she needed to get a grip on herself, and also, perhaps, a light-switch.  
Her hands fumbled to the countertop as she struggled to find her way in the blackness. Suddenly, the immenseness of the bathroom was considerably less appealing than it had been a minute ago, and the slippery marble floor particularly disagreeable. Each step in her heels was as precarious as it was blind, and it was with great difficulty that she avoided crashing to the floor.  
Through the murk, the thunderous sound of roaring waves rose about her, and the air she breathed became thick and salty in her lungs.

And then the taps began to glow. Statistically, she decided, this was probably not good news.

She quickened her pace. Her footsteps splashed as the sinks began to gush saltwater, spilling endlessly over the whorled marble and onto the floor. The throb of the ocean ebbed and flowed through her senses, the faint resistance of running water at her feet seeming to pull her back. She grew more frantic. Something was trying to keep her there. Her hands scrambled blindly in front of her, the faint orange glow behind illuminating nothing but the occasional flash of her own painted nails. Where was the door? Where was the handle?  
The pipes clanked and spluttered, bubbling and spewing as the liquid pouring out slowly thickened, finally oozing out in a viscous trickle.

Her nails scratched at something that had to be a wooden door just as a loud pop issued from the taps. She dared to glance back for only a split second, horrified as her eyes landed on endless slimy suckers and poised tendrils. For a moment all that she could do was freeze. She stared at the tentacles; a scream lodged in her throat. And then they lunged. And so did she.  
Her fingers closed around the handle as she wrenched the door open. She pulled with such force that when the hinges did swing far enough to let her through, her own momentum sent her tripping on her heels.  
The plush red carpet of the corridor rushed towards her as she fell. Her eyes flashed shut instinctively as she braced for the impact of the fall.

It never came. Someone, it appeared, had caught her.

Upon realising this, Kyoko scrambled to recompose herself.

“I’m terribly sorry…” she began, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she looked cautiously up “I really didn’t- wait, what the fuck?”

Sho Fuwa looked down at her, his expression a perfect melange of indignance of confusion.

“Sorry, what did I do to merit that? Shouldn’t you be thanking me, for a start?”  
“Yes, look, I am grateful that you caught me but… Why are you _here_ , Shotarou?”  
“What do you mean, why am _I_ here? I wrote the sound track for this film, for your information. What in the bloody hell do you think _you’re_ doing here?”

Kyoko stared at him for a moment. He had gotten taller since she’d last seen him. The last of his teenage growth-spurts had evidently sent him shooting up, and he carried the extra height with the awkwardness of one unaccustomed to being looked up at. His sleek black suit was a far cry from the visual kei aesthetic that she had last seen him inhabiting, and though his hair was manifestly beginning to spike in its usual unruly manner, it looked as if he had at least tried to slick it back into something resembling cultivation. He had grown, in more ways than one.

“It was great” she said, simply.  
“What?”  
“The soundtrack. It really moved me. To tears, even.”

Sho wore the praise like an ill-fitting shoe. He seemed in some ways too small for it, still too selfish and brash to deserve it, and yet in others it was almost as if the compliment pinched; he looked uncomfortable, and his voice was strangely strangled when he finally replied.

“Uhm, thank you.”

He paused a moment to readjust his shirt collar. Kyoko noticed that he was leaning away from her, and making a great effort to maintain a little distance between them.

“Look, I’m sorry that this interaction got off to a bit of an aggressive start, but I have actually been meaning to have a talk with you. I’ve been trying to call you since a few months ago now, but you never pick up and-”  
“I think I blocked your number” shot Kyoko  
“Thanks.” Continued Sho “I gathered. Anyway, I think we should actually talk about, you know… why we’re on such bad terms.”

She narrowed her eyes. Reflecting in the many mirrors that lined the walls of the corridor, they formed a disembodied army of pale watchers, all staring at Sho with scorn.

“You took me out of my home town, forced me to pay rent for a ridiculous apartment which, for the record, you barely came home to in any case, and then slagged me off to your manager behind my back. How was that supposed to build a healthy relationship, exactly?”  
“I know, and I’ll fully admit, it wasn’t fair of me to place the financial burden on you or even ask you to move here with me. You didn’t deserve the stress I put on you, and I’m sorry for it. But…”

Kyoko arched an eyebrow. The apology had been going well, she thought. It had been highly uncharacteristic of him to admit any wrongdoing, and for once he wasn't diverting the blame. But.

“But what?”  
“We were both sixteen, Kyoko! Sixteen! I hadn’t even finished high school and I had thousands of adoring fans. I had a schedule, a manager, an image to uphold. I was constantly being objectified, even sexualised and I was… I was still so young. Suddenly everyone was looking at me and talking about me like I was a piece of meat, and I- I hated it. And I thought having you there would make things better, Kyoko, I really did. We had been friends for so long, and I thought I could be myself around you. But at some point the way that you looked at me changed. You know? You-”  
“Looking back, I wasn’t very subtle about it, no.” said Kyoko, filling a gap in which he struggled to get the words out.  
“And it became just as suffocating being with you as being at work, and I know that doesn’t make up for what I put you through in the end, and I know I was being a shitty stupid teenager talking about you behind your back, but that’s why, okay? That’s why I did it; I was sixteen years old and I didn’t know how to handle those emotions and I really, genuinely, didn’t intend to hurt you like I did.”

Sighing heavily, she pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned.

“Right,” she said “okay, I get that. I didn’t know you felt that way, and I sympathise. But I was sixteen too, Shotarou. I idolised you precisely because you had separated me from any one else I could have been friends with, I had no on else to rely on. Do you have any-” tears of frustration pooled in her eyes, even after all this time. She had thought she was over it, but the memories of her first nights alone were surging back, stinging. “any idea how hard it was going back to life after that? Even as I tried to grow away from you, you kept coming back, interfering, reminding me. Why, Sho? Why?”

“I’m sorry,”

Sho’s voice was quiet and grave.

“I’m really sorry and I wanted to say it whilst I had the chance. I totally understand if you don’t want to go back to being friends after this. I just… wanted to get it off my chest, you know?”  
“And I’m glad you did.” Replied Kyoko, straightening up again. “This isn’t going to fix everything but it’s definitely a start.”  
“So, are you finally going to unblock my number?”

She gave a sly grin.

“Maybe”

A soft smile rippled on his face.

“Well, that’s that then. Oh, but what _are_ you doing here today? Without being rude this time.”  
“I’m here as a plus-one. Tsuruga-san’s.”

Sho didn’t even really seem all that surprised.

“Congratulations.” his smile was still warm and genuine as he stated it “Which reminds me, my own plus-one is probably wondering where I am. I’m glad I ran into you, but I think I’ll be off.”

He gave a cursory nod and began to walk away. Kyoko called after him.

“Hey, congratulations to you too. Who is she?”  
“You’ll find out in tomorrow’s magazines!” Sho was already at the end of the corridor, signing goodbye as his figure became a waving silhouette in the overhead lights “Goodbye, Kyoko!”  
“Goodbye, Sho!”

***

  
By the time that Kyoko found Ren again, talking to the costume designer by the bar, she had been gone for almost twenty minutes, and the relief of seeing her again was visible on his face.

She greeted the costume designer politely and took her place by Ren’s side. The designer, having clearly abused her privileges for free champagne, was halfway through drunkenly reciting a rambling story about her trials and tribulations as Ren’s costume assistant. After a significant number of stops and starts, hiccups, and words that slurred into an incomprehensible babble, she swung forward to triumphantly deliver the punch line:  
“So, the intern comes up to me, all terrified-like. All a-quiver, ‘n I asks her, what ever’s a’matter? ‘N she says, Tsuruga-san’s got blood on his collar again, so I says, nothing to worry on, love, he can pretend it’s someone else’s in the next scene an’way!”

She finished her monologue by roaring so hard with laughter at her own joke that she was escorted from the bar. Kyoko stared, mortified, and subsequently turned as red as a stop-light, whilst Ren slipped back into his defensive ultra-smile.  
Once she had had a few moments to radiate off the heat of her burning cheeks, Kyoko finally turned to him. His picture-perfect press smile was still in place, but the faintest of wrinkles around the outer corners of his lips deceived to her that he was maintaining it under strain. His social batteries were running out for the night.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she whispered to him, outwardly nodding respectfully as more production crew passed by. “We can go if you’d like”  
“Perfect” said Ren, “I’ll call a cab.”

***

  
Taxis, Kyoko decided, were far too spacious.

Of course, as a relatively newbie actress, she hardly had the means to take them on a regular basis, and she was willing to admit that perhaps her exclusion from the taxi-taking class might have given it a luxurious image that it didn’t deserve. She had looked upon the taxi as the ultimate getaway from an event such as that night’s premier, the pinnacle of celebrity comfort. And yet the kind of comfort that she found herself craving could only be found in Ren’s hands, separated from hers by a whole seat’s expanse. There was no excuse to play with his hair, lean her head on his broad shoulder, or even share a longing gaze when the hawk eyes of the cab driver were locked on them in the rear-view mirror.

She finished recounting the tale of her run-in with Sho just as they exited the main thoroughfare. Ren’s eyes drifted away from an advertisement board that he had been watching through the window, and back to Kyoko at his side.

“I’m glad that Fuwa’s matured a little.” He said “Does the apology feel like a satisfactory conclusion?”  
“Mostly.” She responded “It’s more the situation with the glowing creatures from the beyond that worries me.”

Ren looked cautiously to the driver, decided that he was sufficiently distracted by the traffic ahead, and responded cautiously, his voice lowered.

“It’s not… gone?”  
“I thought it was.”  
“Crawling out of the tap is pretty conclusive evidence to the contrary.” He sighed.

Kyoko stared at her hands in her lap. She pawed nervously at the soft velvet of her dress, a shiver running down her spine.

“Are you cold?”

Ren’s keen gaze had missed nothing. Kyoko started to insist to against it, but his wide burgundy-silk scarf was already wrapped around her shoulders. She pulled the fine material closer, letting him fuss over the exact way that it draped for a bit as a smile crept over her. He sneakily turned to plant a quick kiss on her forehead before reclining back.

She looked at him both tenderly and sarcastically, and had just started to retort when the taxi came to a halt. The driver announced their arrival at Ren’s condominium, as well as the eye-watering cost of their journey. Shocked and a feeling a little bit guilty, Kyoko eventually accepted to let Ren pay the bill, and they made their way to his apartment. They took the elevator up on account of Kyoko’s wearing heels, and she ripped the shoes off her feet as soon as she passed over the threshold.

“Aaaaaaah, now that’s so much better.”

Ren stared in disbelief as he more methodically untied the laces of his black derby shoes.

“You’ve been walking around all evening with your feet like _that_?”  
“I’m an excellent actress” preened Kyoko smugly.  
“Well, never let me doubt it again.” Held Ren, glancing down at her red and raw heels as he put his coat and suit jacket away. “At least your shoes will be broken in for the next time you wear them”

She pulled the scarf from her shoulders and handed it to him as he popped off both of his shoes, making her way to the kitchen.

“Hmmm, I wonder when I’ll wear them next?” she wondered out loud. She reached for the kettle and looked to Ren, who was down to his shirt and suit trousers, and casually loosening his collar in a way that was ever so fetching. “Oh, sorry for not asking; can I make some tea?”  
“Be my guest”

She took the kettle to the tap, clicking its sleek top open to pour water in. Her hands grasped firmly around the tap handles, but it still took a little force to turn them and get the water running. She had half-filled it when the stream of water began to thin. With a hollow choke, the tap gushed and then stopped entirely.  
Kyoko took a step back as the tube began to shake and rattle and the first few splodges of goo began to drip from its mouth. Her hands inched towards the knife rack as she shot Ren a look. Stepping slowly towards her, he whispered:  
“Is this… ?”

She nodded in affirmation, to which he responded by grabbing a frying pan from an overhead rack. They stood, bracing with their weapons out, and watched as salty sludge oozed out. From inside the pipework a muffled and metallic sound was growing nearer, bumping and shaking the tap more and more as each second passed. The hands holding their armaments twitched apprehensively as it gave a final deep rumble and then, before either of them could react, a tentacle burst out with a wet squelch.

Its suckers, ringed with sharp teeth, and patterned maroon skin blurred as it twisted through the air, shooting past Kyoko to latch onto Ren’s legs. He was caught off guard, having been preparing to defend his torso, and was flipped instantly off his feet with a loud slam when he hit the tiles. The tentacle tightened around his limb, holding him down as he struggled and twisted, seemingly resistant to all attacks by frying pan. Kyoko, meanwhile, had grabbed the sharpest knife that she could find. She tried frantically to grab the writhing limb, raising her arm as she aimed a slash.

“Kyoko!” Ren shouted, shattering the silence of panting and slipping, “Behind you!”

She whipped around just as something slimy gripped her hand. It wove between her fingers and squeezed with a crushing force, bringing her to her knees. She could feel her knuckles crackle like lightning as pain and pressure began to spread from her hand through her arm, into her torso and the very heart inside her chest. Her lungs felt like fire and her breaths were becoming uneven. It was all that she could do to drop her knife and grab and claw at the tentacle with her other hand. Whole body heaving, pulling away with desperate force, she turned to Ren, the image of his horrified face fading as her vision began to fizzle and blur. Using the last of her strength, she tried to pull away.

And fell. The thing had let go of her.

The fog in her mind cleared just as Ren’s sturdy arm reached out to stop her fall. She fell neatly into his lap, and they sat on the floor, watching the tentacles recede back into the pipework and catching their breath in complete silence.

“Well,” said Ren “that was unpleasant.”

Kyoko flicked at some goo that had landed on his face and picked herself up.

“This makes the third time I’ve fallen into someone’s arms this week, and frankly, I’m getting pretty tired of it.”

Leaning down to offer him a hand, she noticed that the leg of his trousers was ripped where the tentacles had been.

“Are you alright?”

Ren took her hand and pulled himself to standing.

“More or less.” He said “Your hands are sticky.”

Kyoko looked down and found that her hand, wrapped firmly around his, was covered in thick, opalescent slime. When she tried to let go of his hands, mortified, she unhappily found that she couldn’t. The mysterious substance had glued their hands together so effectively that, after much pulling and unsuccessful sliding around, they ended up having to pry them apart with a butter knife. With the sound of a bursting bubble, they eventually separated their digits, wiggling them experimentally to confirm that nothing was amiss.

“So we still don’t really know why any of that just happened.” Stated Kyoko, half confirming and half questioning as she cautiously turned the taps back on. She breathed a sigh of relief when water began to pour out as usual.  
“Actually… Oh, hot water is the other one, yes, you’ve got it… Anyway, as I was saying, I think there was something in your hand. It was small and hard; I could feel it when your palm pressed against mine.”

Kyoko, who had been just about to wash her hands, pulled them away from the water to study them.

“Oh my god, you’re right.” There was something small glistening under a layer of goo, orange and shaped like an apple seed “Wait, hang on… My hands are too sticky. Do you mind washing yours first and then picking it out for me?”

Having dutifully washed his hands, Ren once again picked up the butter knife and slowly set about excavating the hidden object. It was a little uncomfortable, but Kyoko secretly rather liked having her hand held for such an extended amount of time, and the care that he took to avoid poking her sent her heart fluttering. She was sure that he was pretending not to notice the outrageous blush that rolled across her face as a wave of pink. He focussed unerringly on his task and cut off, and subsequently binned, several layers of increasingly hardening slime. He laboured until the surface of the mysterious object touched the air, catching the light with a gleam that was at once beautiful and taunting, and then, using his fingers, pulled it slowly out.

“Got it”

Kyoko rushed to clean her hands as Ren stood in the centre of the kitchen, holding the excavated wonder up to the light.

“What do you think it is?” she said, shaking her hands dry.  
“I’ve no idea.” He put it on the flat of his palm to show it to her. “Although…”  
“Although?”  
“Do you mind turning around for a second?”

She obliged, and yelped suddenly when she felt his cold fingers on the nape of her neck.

“Hey! What was that for?” she laughed.  
“I am trying to help here” replied Ren “even though you do have a lovely neck.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Here, let me show you. Can I take off your necklace?”  
“Uhm, sure.”

He handed her the object and unclasped her necklace, placing it on the countertop.

“See, this setting at the back is missing its stone.”  
“Shit, you’re right. How could I have lost it?”

Panic erupted in her mind. She was only renting the necklace, and she couldn’t afford to replace it if the rental company were upset. Was it too late to go back to the venue? Could she ask the cleaning staff if they had found anything? Why was a luxury necklace so easy to break anyway?  
She felt Ren’s broad palm rest calmly on the small of her back. He could sense that she was freaking out.

“Don’t worry. Look at what the thing from the taps gave you.”

She turned over the entity in her hands. It was a gemstone, honey-coloured and cut into a teardrop shape. Upon holding it up to the light, she recognised its characteristic twinkle as topaz. It was the missing stone from her necklace. She pressed the gem back into its setting and then fetched its bag to put it away in, wary of disturbing it further.

“So, the devil itself just handed me back a piece of my jewellery before I even knew it was broken?”  
“From what I gather, at least.”  
“Weird.”  
“Weird.” Confirmed Ren.

He went to actually fill the kettle and put some tea into a teapot, and directed Kyoko to make herself comfortable as he found some mugs for them to use. She sat, contentedly watching his back as he went about preparing tea, and massaged her aching ankles.

“Is it going to leave us alone now, do you think?”  
“I don’t know, really,” replied Ren, placing two mugs of steaming tea on the table and sitting down next to her “this last interaction with it has almost been… positive.”  
“I hope it’s going to stay that way.” Kyoko sipped at her tea, forgetting to blow on it first and immediately burning her tongue. “Sorry, can I go get some milk?”  
“Oh, sorry, I forgot that you take your tea with milk.”  
“It’s fine! Don’t worry about it.” She said as she got out of her chair. She ruffled his ahri as she passed, and he smiled as he went back to drinking his tea.

She walked over to the fridge, easily finding the milk in its usual place. Ren never had milk with his tea or coffee. He kept it there for her.  
Sitting down again, she stirred the milk smoothly into her mug and kicked his foot playfully under the table. For a moment he didn’t react, and Kyoko thought that she’d missed him, but then a devious attack from behind caught her off guard. He smirked at her behind his cup.

“Gotcha.”

She reared her foot to serve a retaliating blow, but stopped dead before she swung.  
Ow. A dull pain thumped in her ankle and she felt something warm run down her heel.  
She looked down. The worn skin on her lower achilles was bleeding. Immediately she pushed away from the table, stumbling back as her eyes flickered over Ren, staring at the bleeding foot.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kicked you there when I knew your ankles hurt. I’ll get a plaster.”

Kyoko remained rooted to the spot, her arms up and defensive. Her heart raced as his dark eyes shifted to hers.

“It’s okay, Kyoko, I’m not going to do anything.”

She cautiously lowered her arms.

“I don’t feel anything.” He said “When I look at blood, I don’t feel anything at all anymore.”

***

  
Life at the LME resumed as usual the next day. Yashiro greeted them at the lobby, and Ren gave her hand a quick squeeze before he walked off for work in another studio.

“Fun night out?” Kanae said, seemingly materialising behind her out of nowhere.  
“Uh, yes actually.” Replied Kyoko, her tone progressively shifting from snarky to affectionate “Did you miss me?”  
“A little. C’mon, I have something to show you before work starts.”

They quickly paced their usual route to the makeshift LoveMe headquarters, and Kyoko opened her locker to begin changing into her pink jumpsuit.

“What have you got to show me?”

Kanae sat on the cramped wooden changing benches, her long and elegant limbs fitting rather less comfortably than Kyoko’s, and scrolled through her phone.

“Wait, let me just find it… Aha! Take a look at this.”

She handed over her phone to her half-changed friend. The screen was on the website for the News Alert, now familiar to Kyoko as one of Kanae’s favourite guilty pleasures.

JAPAN’S LATEST CELEBRITY COUPLE: TSURUGA REN AND MOGAMI KYOKO.

“Imagine how surprised I was to see you on my feed at midnight last night.”  
“Wow, I’d forgotten about the reporters. I had such a crazy night.”  
“It’s a good job we’re on cleaning duty again then, you can tell me all about it.”

She took the phone back and let Kyoko finish changing.

“And hey, you did look great. We’re good at picking dresses.”

Kyoko grinned as she opened the door. And walked straight into Sawara.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Kyoko straightened her posture and looked nervously back at Kanae.

“President Takarada would like to see you in his office.”  
“Of course, sir.”

She hugged Kanae goodbye, agreeing to find her so that they could finish cleaning together, and followed Sawara away.

*** 

  
“Mogami-kun, do you know why you’re here?”

Lory Takarada stared at her from a crowd of painted eyes on the tail feathers of three peacocks that were perched on his lap. The ornaments on his wide-brimmed hat bobbed dramatically as he raised his head, questioning.

“Uhm, no, sir.” She replied haltingly, trying not to be distracted by the glittering curtains and various chirping birds behind him.

Lory fumbled for a bit, carefully lifting each peacock from his lap before rummaging in his seemingly bottomless suit pockets for something. Having found it, he put it on the table with a flamboyant flick of the wrist. It was a tabloid magazine, and her own face next to Ren’s was staring back at her from the front page. She noticed with amusement that Sho and his girlfriend also had a three-page special dedicated to them further in the publication.

“My dear, I’m heartbroken that you didn’t tell me yourself.”  
“I’m sorry sir, it’s all been rather complicated and-”  
“Don’t worry yourself so” he interrupted “I was only joking. But the reason that I called you here today is certainly not a joke. I think the implications of this article on your work are fairly obvious, Mogami-kun.”  
“I’m not sure I’m quite following here.”  
“Don’t you think” he said, regaining his fatherly warmth as he stroked a peacock “That it’s time you graduated from LoveMe?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't already, please check out my first Skip Beat fanfic. It's a mystery/country/mafia story set in France.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to bounce back from the uber-obscure into crowd-pleasing. In order to help this, please let me know what you want or where you see this going. 
> 
> Perhaps I'm trying to cover up the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. Hmmmmmm.


End file.
